baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club

BA Athletics Club News Digest 6th August 2018

Events:

• Saturday 11th August - Club Featured parkrun - for 09:00 at Dinton Pastures (Reading) - See below
• Monday 20th August - T&F Grand Prix 200m & Javelin, 18:00 at Hillingdon Athletics Stadium
• Wednesday 22nd August - Club BBQ plus training / fun event - from 18:00 at Harmondsworth Moor

New members and potential members of all fitness levels and abilities are welcome at all of these events. The full diary of club featured events is on the club website at: http://www.barunner.org.uk/Event Diary.shtml. Last updated: First week of July.

* Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps] / # Club Points event

Not for you, no longer interested? remove me please. / Difficulty viewing this? Read it from the website:- http://www.barunner.org.uk/News Latest.shtml. 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BARunnerUK/ (formal club page), BA Runner Facebook Group (informal - ask to join)

Inclusions, with photos, please to Roderick Hoffman at news@barunner.org.uk.

August Dream Mile results

On a lovely sunny day, hot but with a light breeze we had a good turnout, again, 9 runners in all and amazingly 8 of those are still employed at BA/IAG.  It looks very competitive at the front of the field with the first 5 runners within 17secs of each other.  James Greaves has run a pb on each of his 4 runs and is within touching distance of the fast boys now. We welcomed Andrew Marriott for his first run, hopefully the first of many.

Neil Frediani

Final Vets League Fixture, Perivale 1st August 2018 #

The ladies finished the night 6th with 16 points,

The men finished the night 8th with 23 points.

Steve Hillier

Paul Watt's participation means that he is the 16th member of the club to secure ten points in this year's club points table. Thank you.

Club BBQ - Wednesday August 22nd at Harmondsworth - reply expected

We will be holding the annual BBQ on Harmondsworth Moor on Wednesday 22nd August and will have a fun/training event beforehand. This is a second call to anyone who is willing to help with either the BBQ or the event beforehand.  Please get in touch - it can't happen without you. Also please reply if you simply expect to be there, so that we can cater for enough appetites. Everyone is welcome - you don't have to be members and you can bring your friends and families. Just let us know. The more the merrier.

Roderick Hoffman {roderick@rhoff.org.uk}

Club parkrun results for Saturday 4th August 2018

Sarah Gordon (33:29) completed her century of different parkruns, the 100th being by the River Severn in Shrewsbury.  She was accompanied by her brother Roderick Hoffman (28:48) and sister Charlotte Habgood (39:27) who has done most of her parkruns at Diamond Creek in Melbourne.  The three siblings have appeared at the same parkrun before - Stratford on Avon in March 2016, also by a river.

We’ll focus this week on family members being at the same parkruns, if not actually running together!  Ian (22:14) and Janet Cunningham (30:29) made their visit to Banstead Woods; Piers Keenleyside (38:32) made his eighth appearance at Evesham this time accompanied by a brother and nephew; Steve Taylor (25:36) and Marion (32:38) were at Northala Fields.  Steve is now on 98 runs.

Ian Cockram (29:51) was at Bedfont Lakes where Caroline Cockram was run director, while at Harrow Denis Foxley was run director and Joan Foxley (40:08) was showing a new runner the ropes.  Benita and John Scaife both marshalled at Maidenhead this week.

Steve Newell

Updated parkrun stats - club parkrun stats

parkrun Maps

Eagle-eyed parkrunners may have noticed that the parkrun event list map has been changed to use "OpenStreetMap" instead of "GoogleMaps".  This now means that the map will work on more browsers and devices (though may need a "refresh" every now and again).  Also someone (Ian Shepherd) has produced an interesting browser bookmark that converts the map to show which parkruns you (or someone else) has done - in the image converting the map on the left to the map on the right. See https://ishep.co.uk/parkrun/eventmaphack/ for how to create and save a bookmark to do this.

Club Featured parkrun for Saturday 11th August - Dinton Pastures

A parkrun so new even I haven't run it!  Next Saturday will be the 5th running of Dinton Pastures parkrun (http://www.parkrun.org.uk/dintonpastures/). This is on the nearside of Reading, just off the M4, and so about a 35 minute drive from Hatton Cross. Please note that the start/finish area is different from the one that Reading parkrun used to use - head for postcode RG10 0TH and then Dinton Pastures Country Park and the Dragonfly Cafe. If anyone needs a lift from the Hatton Cross area (which will also reduce the net carpark charge) please let me know. Please try to arrive at least 15 minutes early to enable us to meet up and have a photograph taken.

Roderick Hoffman

Ride London; View from the saddle…..

I would like to thank BAAC for the place in Ride London 100 last Sunday, and give huge applause to the whole team of volunteers at the Cenotaph and around the rest of the course. With Virgin London Marathon volunteers and competitors experiencing exceptional high temperatures during the run in April, everyone last Sunday had to withstand a deluge of rain throughout the event! Having had sunshine throughout all my training rides throughout June and July, it was only when I got up at 5am on the day did I accept it was going to rain – the optimist in me had hoped the forecast was going to be wrong, it wasn’t to be!

My training for the 100 miles ride had been interrupted following doing a ride of a similar length in Majorca at the end of April. Two broken ribs didn’t repair as quickly as I’d hoped, which resulted in 6 weeks of mainly training on a static cycling machine. Within the 3 weeks prior to Ride London 100 I had managed three rides of seventy miles or more, including one following the route through the hills section from Hampton Court to Kingston, so felt prepared.

My start time of 7.28am meant I was starting around the middle of the 25,000 cyclists taking part. Having to be in the starting pen by 6.25am meant a hotel close to Stratford Olympic Park made logistics easier, and after a ‘nutritious’ breakfast, I left the hotel at 5.50am, left my bag at the bag drop van, joined my appropriate pen, and over the next hour slowly meandered through the Olympic Park to the start line. During this time there was rain in the air, but nothing too heavy to require a waterproof top.

My target for the ride was do it nonstop, having ensured I had plenty to drink in the cages on my bike, and flapjacks for energy easily accessible. With the rain getting harder whilst heading out of London, the waterproof top was put on, and the tactic of drafting directly behind other riders went out of the window, as the spray sent straight into your face outweighed the benefit!

I was lucky not to be held up by any of the incidents which occurred after me, and caused later riders to have short cuts imposed on them, and also some had to stop for 20 minutes in Leatherhead. I was also fortunate not to experience a puncture – the wet weather had brought plenty of grit onto the roads and no mile went past without seeing someone beside the road replacing an inner tube.  Although conditions were more challenging than expected, I was able to ride past the Houses of Parliament just before 2.00pm, knowing the BAAC crew would be in sight soon. I slowed to give high 5’s to those volunteers on the tape, and a ‘thank you, BAAC’ shout as I went past the crossing pen, before negotiating Trafalgar Square and enjoying the final stretch along the Mall!

Many thanks again to all the volunteers on the day. Having accepted very early in the day I was going to get wet and there was nothing I could do about it, I had the attitude of ‘enjoy it’, which I certainly did! For those interested, the ballot for the 2019 event opens today! (Monday 6th August 2018) https://www.prudentialridelondon.co.uk/events/100/.

David Duggan

More Officials Courses available

England Athletics are running Level 1 Officials courses for Endurance, Field Judging, and Track Judging on Saturday 6th October at Allianz Park in Hendon. The Endurance course is a bit of a rarity, so I would encourage all clubs to try and get people on to this course.

To find out more or book onto the courses ask Roderick Hoffman or Steve Hillier for the additional information. Note that BAAC is happy to subsidize members taking such courses.

There are also courses in Timekeeping, Photo-Finish, or Starting at Wimbledon in November, again contact one of us for more details.

Roderick Hoffman / Steve Hillier

Andy's Training

Next Digest - Results, news, pictures, feedback, jokes, stories - send it to the editor, Roderick Hoffman, at news@barunner.org.uk.

Club website: www.barunner.org.uk.