baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club
BA Athletics Club News Digest 6th May 2024
Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps] [parkrun run by club members updated April 2024] For future weeks: inclusions, with photos, please to Roderick Hoffman at news@barunner.org.uk. Results for Next WeekPlease help me by sending in your results, for instance by filling in the tables below and forwarding to News@barunner.org.uk. Some events will have "Prompts" set up in Facebook. These allow the posting of a single image and some text and make it easy to flip through everyone's entries. Your Athletic Achievement of the Week (or use the prompt in the BAAC Facebook group):
April Mile Results
We've had very few mile results over the winter and early spring but things should now improve - I've already got initial May mile times for three of us; Bob and Ian at the first of this year's Arethusa Miles (Mike was timing) and a mile from Ben also. Those may be improved upon and more may come before the end of May.
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| 1500m | 800m | 400m | 200m | 100m | |
| Simon Turton | 7:33 | 3:35 | 1:38 | 0:44 | 0:19.4 |
| Steve Taylor | 7:38 | 3:53 | 1:46 | 0:46 | 0:21.5 |
| Roderick Hoffman | 7:49 | 3:55 | 1:48 | 0:47 | 0:20.0 |
| Steve Hillier | 10:07 | 5:14 | 2:22 | 0:56 | 0:21.2 |
Our first Veteran’s league match will take place on Monday 13th May at the Battersea track, starting at 1830. This is a chance to compete against your contemporaries, age groups covered being V35, V50, V60…and there are some V70 events. Disciplines this time, for both men and women, will be:
Track: 100m, 2000m walk, 400m, 1500m, 4 x 400m
Field: High Jump, Shot, Long Jump, Discus
Please let me know if you are able to compete, and which events you would
prefer to take part in, so we can provide a declaration in advance.
The
Battersea Park Millennium Arena is at the eastern end of the park (SW11 4JP).
There is plenty of free parking. Nearby buses run to Sloane Square tube
station. Battersea Park and Queenstown Road railway stations are close by.
The following week we will start our Rosenheim league season at Kingston, on Wednesday 22nd May. Kingsmeadow Athletics Centre (KT1 3PB) is a mile from Kingston. Norbiton station is a fifteen minute walk from the track.
For the 7th May the route(s) will start and finish at the Scaife's house at 9 Abell Gardens, Maidenhead SL6 6PS with the usual 12.00 start.
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John says, "There will be a running route of about 4 miles and a shorter route for walkers. Benita and I may opt to split so that one of us can lead each group. Both routes are off-road and a mix of woodland paths and farm tracks. It is normally possible to park in Abell Gardens, either on-street or using the four car parking bay adjacent to our driveway entrance which is for the use of residents and their visitors. If Abell Gardens is especially busy that day there are other on-street options in the immediate vicinity such as Cranbrook Drive and Knowsley Close. We will host lunch for those who wish to stay afterwards. People are welcome
to turn up on the day but for catering purposes it would be helpful to have some
idea of numbers in advance. I have created a sign-up which folk can use by
following the link below: |
Thank you to those of you who have already come forward to offer your help for this race. We do need a few more marshals to manage the last crossing on the course. Are you free to help? The location is spectacular, overlooking the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Kit and a lunch pack will be provided, and we will run a coach from Bedfont. Alternatively, the site is next to Tower Hill station. If you can help out for all or part of the day, please let me know.
Thank you,
If you've included your payment for England Athletics Registration with your membership fee then you should have received an email from England Athletics confirming your payment. This includes a request for you to complete their registration. Please try to find the time to do this, because EA will nag you and the club until you do. Sorry, but there are a number of steps to this - I've listed these below. So please allow yourself a good five minutes, or more if you want to read the blurb that you are signing that you have read!
Yes, you can probably run some races quicker than it takes to complete the above...but you shouldn't be out of breath (if you are...then consult your doctor). I doubt very much that EA can enforce what you've signed up to - for instance that you will "uphold the same sporting values away from sport as when engaged in athletics" but it gets them off our backs.
15 entries this week.
| Colleague | Activity | Distance | Course | When | Duration | Comments |
| Alice Banks | Race | Half-M | Estepona Half Marathon | Sun | [no details - but the photo shows that she did well] | |
| Andy Rayner | Various | Various | Wed Fast cycle Ockwells/part CoxGreen in 11m 53s / Thurs Cycle Ockwells/part estate in 10m 51s / Fri Fast walk estate in 10m 11s / Sat Cycle Ockwells Estate and Cox Green in 18m 27s | |||
| Barry Walters | Gym | Bracknell | Sat | Rest day from running. 50 minute bootcamp session with burpees and running on the spot plus hand weights for bicep and tricep curls. Followed by 30 minute sprint cycle class at my local leisure centre. | ||
| Benita Scaife | Walking | Chemin Saint Jacques de Compostelle (Camino de Santiago) | We were still on the trail (see last week) for most of the week, but are now home. We averaged just over 20kms per day mostly on woodland trails at about 1,000 metres elevation… | |||
| John Scaife | Walking | Chemin Saint Jacques de Compostelle (Camino de Santiago) | ...The whole French section of the route, of which we walked a one week section is 750kms. It then joins the main Spanish Camino which is a further 800kms before finally reaching Santiago de Compostella. | |||
| Jasvir Singh Modaher | Race | Half-M | Birmingham Great Run | Sun | 02:34:41 | |
| Julie Barclay | Race | 10km | Martin Fiz 10k | Sun | 00:44:20 | See below |
| Paul Watt | Race | 10km | Martin Fiz 10k | Sun | 00:38:49 | See below |
| Marzia Coltelli | Race | Half-M | Lucca Half Marathon | Sun | 02:23:40 | Finished significantly ahead of any "cut off time". Good plodding! |
| Petra Otto | parkrun | 5km | March | Sat am | My ‘best effort’ this week will no doubt be the Parkwalk. No gym this week - having spent 14.5 hours at A&E last Sunday, having so many tests carried out re my gallbladder. All clear for now…but tests ongoing... | |
| Piers Keenleyside | Race | Marathon | ColleMar-athon in Italy | Sun | 04:28:59 | My 211th marathon. Slower than I wanted but it was very hot with a fair bit of elevation to climb. Great start where you get showered with confetti and a cannon is fired to send us on our way. The finish was in Fano at the Augustus Caesar gateway. In the MV65-69 age category I was 10th of 41. |
| Roderick Hoffman | Race | 14.48km | Wings for Life Worth Run Breda | Sun | 01:29:48 | See below |
| Simon Turton | parkrun | 5km | Dinton Pastures | Sat am | With my eldest, Hayley. Only my 9th parkrun, first at Dinton. Quite a bunched start and buggies & dogs didn’t help. Still, nice atmosphere . Apparently travelling from Twyford doesn’t make you a tourist (Woodley’s closer). | |
| Trish McCabe | Running | Half-M | Teddington to Richmond park and back | Sun | 02:20:00 | A training run including visiting the Isabella Plantation. The colours of the plants were exceptional and in full bloom. My time would have been better if i didn’t stop to take so many photos. |
| Vicky McFarlin | Race | Half-M | Lucca Half Marathon | Sun | 01:49:20 | "Bad day in the office". Choice of wrong trainers and aggravating old broken toes. [first half in 50:38] |
[The
black & white image isn't me being arty...it's the only way I could copy a "3D"
image for the digest]
The "Week Achievement" table has been going since the start of the Covid-19 Pandemic, so now into its fifth year. I hadn't expected to continue with it after the Pandemic ended, once we could meet and run together, but it was clearly popular and particularly useful for our more distant members. So I continued it. The original idea was that it would be your one outstanding achievement of the week. But for some of us the outstanding achievement is simply to keep going. I try not to apply judgment to whatever I get sent - fitting whatever into the format and space as best I can.
My personal dilemma this week was between three very contrasting runs. Should my achievement of the week be:
As you can see, I went for the latter.
At 12 o'clock BST on Sunday at more than twenty locations around the world 265,817 runners set off. Thirty minutes later at each of the seven race venues a racing car driver would get into his car and set off after you (other venues were APP based virtual runs so worked differently). Initially the cars would drive slowly but as the distance clocked up they would gradually increase their speed. When the chasing car passed a runner that runner was out, with the clock stopped for them (on a technical note, the cars were equipped with chip detectors to record finish times/distances, you can see these in the photographs).
Logistics were such that there were drinks stations every five km and when you were caught you had to walk on to the next station to get a bus back to the start. I had trained hard at 6:15 pace which would get me past the 14km distance. On the day I did better - managing 14.48km which was ideal for me to then walk to the 15km drinks station (actually at about 15.5km). There I had some refreshments, waited for the third bus back to the start, collected my medal, walked back to the hotel, changed my shirt and put on some trousers, returned to the start, cheered the leaders as they came through at the end of their second 25km lap, then got myself some chips and a beer and watched the worldwide chase finish on the big screen in the race village. The contrast with a marathon is absolute - in the marathon the slow runners are out for the longest and, potentially, have the toughest run. With the Wings for Life it’s the good runners who have the toughest runs.
At Breda the leading women did 48.5km, the leading man did 66.6km. Across all venues the last women did 55km and the last man, running in the dark in Tokyo, ran 70.1km. Between us we ran over 2million km on the day!, and generated 8.1million euro. All of the entry fee and more goes to spinal injury research so this is a great event in many ways. Look out for the event for next May - you can signup for information on it through this link >here.
Roderick Hoffman
Martin
Fiz 10k It takes a lot for us to miss a parkrun and we had not missed one since WARR on 15Oct 2022 until this week.
We were over in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque region in Spain, a few years ago and we agreed that we would like to run here. It is my mother’s home town and it definitely became a goal of ours. At the time the 10k option was not available as they only held a marathon and a half-marathon but last year we noted that the 10k had been added and the decision to enter was easy to make. It meant losing a parkrun but if we were to miss it for another run, then this would be it.
For the football fans amongst us, the race is a there-and-back along wide city roads from and to the Medizorrotza Stadium which is home to Alaves F.C. of the Spanish La Liga. The conditions were perfect as it was dry with a slight breeze and a cool temperature. Bizarrely, although chip timed, the runners of the three distances start together and stay on the same course for 4k before branching off in different directions; we did manage to follow the correct route.
Although we have trained well this year we both felt ill-prepared and tired but then we looked at our finish times and are obviously delighted with the outcomes. I ran a 10k pb and my forever target of sub-40minutes was achieved and Julie ran her fastest 10k for seven years. We did not feel good but ran our best….who can explain this?
The event was arranged and managed by Martin Fiz, a local from Vitoria who was the marathon world champion in 1995 and he took time to share a photograph with us at the end. There is a statue in the town square of Wellington defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Vitoria and the English are made very welcome here and needless to say, the club vests proved rather interesting to those who noticed them.
Paul Watt / Julie Barclay
36 activities are recorded below. Please get in touch if your activity is missing.
| Club parkrunner | parkrun | Run# | Pos | Time | Age Grade | Comment |
| Christopher T KELLY | Aylesbury | 434 | 137 | 0:37:33 | 41.99% | Reading back to its steady state - flooded. First run at Aylesbury, 86th different event. |
| Sarah GORDON | Beacon Hill Country Park | 63 | 181 | 1:01:16 | 34.63% | 3rd run (or walk) at Beacon Hill Country Park. No one else from the club has yet visited. |
| Joe NOLAN | Black Park | 711 | 400 | 0:34:00 | 51.27% | 405th run at Black Park - since January 2010. |
| Adrian HAINES | Brighton & Hove | 796 | 6 | 0:18:55 | 82.64% | 4th run at Brighton & Hove and breaks his own club age grade record from 12 years ago - only 88 seconds slower. |
| Ian Haylock | Bushy Park | 983 | 105 | 0:20:44 | 72.91% | Together we've now run at Bushy Park 1,718 times. (twenty more than at Bedfont Lakes - 1,698) |
| Colin HAYLOCK | Bushy Park | 983 | 169 | 0:21:56 | 69.45% | |
| Ian CUNNINGHAM | Bushy Park | 983 | 739 | 0:27:52 | 58.07% | |
| Diana Smith | Bushy Park | 983 | 1445 | 0:47:00 | 50.67% | |
| Paul TIMMS | Cirencester | 241 | 24 | 0:23:44 | 67.56% | 56 runs at Cirencester, and no other club member has run there! |
| Melanie Miller | Clapham Common | 225 | 852 | 0:37:42 | 48.01% | 15th club member to run at Clapham Common. |
| Maria JOVANI | Crane Park | 557 | 39 | 0:23:58 | 68.29% | 450th parkrun, 30th at Crane Park. F2 |
| Simon TURTON | Dinton Pastures | 237 | 192 | 0:30:01 | 52.53% | Ninth ever parkrun, first at Dinton Pastures. Allowed daughter Hayley to have the "30:00" finish. |
| Alastair HESLOP | Guildford | 517 | Run Director at Guildford. On the look-out for early inflatables. | |||
| Mike DENNISON | Hanworth | 181 | 4 | 0:20:43 | 81.74% | 21st run at Hanworth. Has now been 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and "5th or more" 4 times each [and 2nd an extra time] |
| Denis FOXLEY | Harrow | 398 | 178 | 0:31:33 | 60.06% | 250th parkrun! Including 208 at Harrow. |
| Joan FOXLEY | Harrow | 398 | 267 | 0:38:30 | 62.99% | 250th run at Harrow (out of her 296 parkruns) |
| Scott DAVISON | Hazelwood | 230 | 64 | 0:34:06 | 43.94% | |
| Janet Smith | Henley-on-Thames | 278 | 72 | 0:43:09 | 43.72% | One Hundred and Eighty (parkruns). PB by ten minutes. |
| Benita SCAIFE | Maidenhead | 408 | 298 | 0:36:47 | 59.54% | |
| John SCAIFE | Maidenhead | 408 | 299 | 0:36:56 | 47.74% | |
| Petra OTTO | March | 343 | 100 | 0:51:20 | 44.09% | Four walks at March this year and that is the fastest. |
| Piers KEENLEYSIDE | Marecchia | 326 | 11 | 0:27:27 | 62.23% | 15 second PB from two years ago - on a slightly improvised course. Improves his own club records there. |
| Harjit Jhooti | Northala Fields | 444 | 348 | 0:38:06 | 47.51% | Northala Fields "Nelson" 444 - still needs 111, 666 and 888 to complete the set (and Bushy Park later this year for "999" but don't tell anyone). |
| Bob BANNISTER | Osterley | 475 | 125 | 0:26:44 | 63.90% | |
| Trish MCCABE | Osterley | 475 | 131 | 0:26:57 | 60.11% | |
| Oliver MATHAI | Osterley | 475 | 140 | 0:27:11 | 64.87% | |
| Anne Bannister | Osterley | 475 | 215 | 0:30:09 | 70.37% | |
| Jeremy SHORT | Osterley | 475 | 329 | 0:35:20 | 46.60% | |
| Alan ANDERSON | Osterley | 475 | 381 | 0:44:44 | 60.92% | All the fours, 44:44, on the fourth |
| Stephen Waite | Riddlesdown | 624 | 87 | 0:35:45 | 52.12% | 49th parkrun, all at Riddlesdown. I wonder where the 50th will be run? |
| Eddie GILES | Salisbury | 388 | 205 | 0:28:32 | 66.41% | 88 of our 93 runs at Salisbury have been run by Eddie. |
| David DUGGAN | Southall | 117 | 44 | 0:35:26 | 46.90% | 25th run at Southall |
| Fiona Bishop | Valentines | 622 | 97 | 0:26:06 | 77.65% | Starting on the 2nd alphabet? 98th different parkrun venue. |
| Roderick HOFFMAN | Waterakkers | 57 | 16 | 0:28:23 | 58.02% | Fastest parkrun since May last year…which was also in Holland. Must like it flat! First BA man and Age Grade record from Melanie. |
| Jacqueline Haines | Woking | 415 | 129 | 0:28:33 | 62.58% | |
| David Cowell | Wollaton Hall | 137 | Marshall at Wollaton Hall |
Steve's all at sea again, this week and next, so only a few notes here...
It can be difficult for couples celebrating milestones at parkruns since inevitably they get out of step due to injuries and engagements. Well done then to the Foxleys who managed a combined "250 each" celebration at Harrow. In Denis' case his 250th parkrun, and for Joan her 250th run at Harrow.
Several regulars missed parkrun this week - as well as Steve we had Alice, Paul and Julie running races in places without Saturday parkruns. If we are approaching the end of parkruns as we know them many of us could start visiting countries which don't have parkruns.
Our top seven attended parkruns are now:
Nowhere else have we exceeded 500. The graph shows changes over the years - Bushy being top up to 2018 and then reclaiming the top spot in 2013, but still very close. The growth at Bedfont Lakes from 2015 to 2019 probably has a great deal to do with Neil Frediani, who moved north in 2020. Reading looks like it may overtake Gunnersbury soon, and Osterley is growing rapidly and may shortly leave Crane and Black Park behind.
Full club parkrun database - {read access to club parkrun database} - Download or save a copy, and explore at your leisure.
Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps]
Roderick Hoffman
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Track and Field Result – May 2024