baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club

BA Athletics Club News Digest 7th November 2022

Events marked "#" are points scoring for the club's participation trophy - for the 2022 title.

Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps]

For future weeks: inclusions, with photos, please to Roderick Hoffman at news@barunner.org.uk.

This Week's Events

Please 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.

Monthly Mile (submit by end of Sunday 13th November):

Run one mile and send me your time or add the details to the prompt in Facebook. The mile can be somebody else's formal event or even one mile within a longer run. I'll then produce a fancy graph showing your time this month compared to those of other people and previous runs over the last year.

Weekly Athletic Achievement (by Sunday evening) or use the Facebook group prompt:

Surrey League Cross Country on Saturday

The Venue for this, for both our teams, has been confirmed as Oxshott Woods, A244, Oxshott, KT22 0TA. The men are running from 12pm, the ladies from 2pm.

Amanda Coombs / Paul Knechtl

Next Year's Club Membership Fee

The BAAC membership fee remains as great value unaltered at just £9 to cover you from April 2023 to March 2024. However please note that the England Athletics Registration fee is being raised from £16 to £17. Therefore those of you who pay for affiliation will be asked for a total of £26 for next year. You may need to adjust your direct debits before the payment is due.

Chris Kelly, Treasurer 

Invitation - KLM Beach Run Sat 17th December

So far I've had one interest in this event - is anyone else considering this? See last week's digest for more details.

Roderick Hoffman

Recent Activity Achievements

22 club members and friends achievements are listed below.

Roderick Hoffman

parkrun Results for Saturday 5th November 2022

42 activities are recorded this week - the highest number since February 2020. Please get in touch if your activity is missing.

parkrun Review Saturday 5th November 2022

A much publicised appearance by Body Coach Joe Wicks attracted a huge attendance at Maidenhead and Janet Smith (43:44) patiently made her way round special two lap narrow course. She did well, there were over 100 finishers who took more than an hour for the 5km which may be a record for a UK parkrun but maybe a sign of things to come. 965 finishers! The circus will move on to Camperdown (Dundee) next Saturday.  His appearance is part of the annual BBC backed “Children in Need“ appeal.  Maidenhead regulars Benita(32:01) and John Scaife(35:01) chose a less busy parkrun at Bicester instead.  Good shopping nearby?

Our fastest parkrunner this week was Adrian Haines (18:54) at Severn Bridge.  David Cowell (19:33) visited Uppsala (Sweden) for the first time taking the club total to 688 different parkruns.

Steve Newell (46:51) went to the newest London parkrun at Lordship Recreation Ground to regain his “Londone” badge. It is very walkable from Turnpike Lane station on the Piccadilly Line. There are currently 60 5km parkruns in the London boroughs.  Trish McCabe (27:52) who exhausted the supply of London parkruns to do a couple of weeks ago went just beyond the fringes to Cassiobury in Watford.  Roderick Hoffman visited another new one nearby at Leavesden Country Park (Abbots Langley) and found it crowded and muddy reminding him why he never really enjoyed cross-country!  Another parkrun started up this week at Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, handy for the Peak District National Park.

Paul Watt (21:08) and Julie Barclay (23:40) spent some challenging days during the “interruption” running from Central London to Premier and Football League grounds in the capital.  This week they chose to run at Fulham Palace, bang next door to Craven Cottage the home of Fulham FC.  The parkrun was suspended from February to August this year while the paths were meticulously improved and only restarted on 3rd September.  Attendances are around the 400 mark.  Three flat laps (almost) and the course slightly longer than the one the event started with!
Harjit Jhooti (35:40) ran at Gunpowder parkrun (Epping Forest district) and was one of 340 first timers there and part of a record attendance of 479.  Parkruns have been held there on Saturday 5th November twice before.  In 2011 there were just 21 runners and 4 volunteers, in 2016 the numbers were up to 194 and 8.  This time round there were 479 and 34.

The next club featured parkrun will be at Gladstone Park on 19th November with the final one of the year at Osterley Park on 17th December.  Osterley is one of the first parkruns to announce festive season plans – no extra 5km runs on Christmas day or New Years Day this time round.

Steve Newell

Matters Arising - Maidenhead parkrun

Neither Joe Wicks nor Pudsey Bear are listed in the results, so I'm guessing that Joe forgot his barcode and Pudsey had no way of carrying a bearcode. Paul Sinton-Hewitt finished in 58:31 so it was good of Janet to wait around for him [picture]. In this "it's OK to walk" initiative there were 78 participants listed with times longer than 60minutes (plus about 50 "Unknowns"). Despite the crowds on this two lap course 51 of the participants are listed as having achieved PBs.

 There were 37 first timers and 170 "Unknowns". 105 were existing parkrunners on their first visit to Maidenhead. The remaining 510 were parkrunners who had previously finished Maidenhead parkrun.

Having the right equipment

Some groups on Facebook seem dedicated to ensure that you know what type of running shoe to wear at each parkrun. Adrian discovered that it isn't just the shoes you need to worry about - the only shorts he found on him for the Severn Bridge parkrun were very long and were like sails in the cross wind. It is fortunate that he didn't end up either in the channel or blown onto the M4.

parkrun Volunteering

Our regular parkrun reporting only mentions volunteering for 5k runs, for roles that deprive you of a run opportunity and only for parkruns that we check (primarily Bedfont Lakes, Guildford and Harrow) or where we are notified of a role. The reason for this is a dearth of parkrun reports on volunteer efforts. I complain regularly about this - including to parkrun HQ.

What I can do however is to extract a snapshot of total volunteering for each individual and compare the totals with previous snapshots. So, this report focuses on the volunteering done between 12th April and 2nd November of this year - a period of just over six months.

Originally parkrun proposed that all regular runners should volunteer three times a year and also often it is suggested that volunteer credits should be collected in a ratio of 1 to 10 with runs. However, in practice it turns out that parkrun volunteering doesn't work that way - some people volunteer frequently, some rarely and some not at all - often for perfectly valid reasons. That is true for the parkrun community as a whole and also for the club's parkrunners.  No criticism is implied here for those with low or no volunteer rates - though the thought is that those individuals may be missing out on part of the parkrun experience.

Overall club members have got about 352 credits over those 29 weeks - so just over 12 a week (so many more than the two a week we report on in the standard table).

Many of our members have accumulated ten or more volunteer credits in the six months since April. Leading the way is, as usual, David Duggan with 163 credits - obviously this covers multiple roles at Saturday and Junior parkruns. Emma Moreton is next with 67 credits (mostly for "Communications") and then Michael Dennison with 51 - Mike's roles are well spread across the available roles. Since the April snapshot Paul Watt has stepped up to the mark 46 times (21 times for "Barcode Scanning", often having run the course fast) and Julie Barclay 39 times. Alastair Hislop has received 33 credits, mostly at Guildford but also at Broadwater when Guildford is closed (I know this from weekly data - the snapshot data does not include locations).

Others who have volunteered twenty or more times are Ben Chaytow, David Cowell, Di Smith, Maria Jovani and Melanie Miller. Also mentions for Denis and Joan Foxley, Harjit Jhotti and Petra Otto for ten or more.

In terms of roles performed; 76 times parkruns have been dependent on our members for the "Communications" role and 45 times for the thankless "Volunteer Coordinator" role. The next highest is "Barcode Scanning" with 42 occasions and "Report Writing" with 40 (that is a lot of reports - I wish I had the same level of input into this digest!). We've provided "Marshal" 35 times, "Pre-event Setup" 33 times and "Timekeeper" 31 times. Roles in the twenties are "Token Sorting", "Tail Walker" (esp. Diana and Petra), "Post-event Close Down" and "Run Director".

We are represented across all current roles except perhaps "VI Guide" where our potential helpers haven't been called into action or have been too busy with their own Everests. The newest role, "parkwalker", has already been undertaken four times, by four different club members.

Trends are very difficult to see due to the snapshot comparison process, changing club membership and even changing role names (e.g. "First Timers Briefing" to "First Timers Welcome"). Perhaps "Car Park Marshal" and "Event Course Check" have grown over the last few years and we do far more "Token Sorting" than we used to.

Roderick Hoffman

Full club parkrun database - {read access to club parkrun database} - Download and explore.

Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps]

> Roderick Hoffman

Tunnel Vision Run

The format of Tunnel Vision run is two out and back races along a former railway line with a long tunnel in the middle. One is at night, everyone in lights with lots of jollity, the other at dawn the next morning. A more tranquil (achey muscles) run.

To ensure everyone does the full run you get a silly gift at the turnaround point. Easy to remember the runs I've done, the one with the maracas, the flashing glasses, the carrot and now the light saber. You had to inflate it yourself before you got back to the finish. Medals are great too, two different that interlock. Distance is uncomfortably far for me, each is 5 miles long so 10 miles within a 12 hour period, but I wasn’t quite the last to finish this morning - and I did stop to take photos! Home to bed now!

Sarah Gordon

Heathrow T5 "Half Marathon"

And more tunnel running - Simon Turton spotted this blog relating to running a half marathon within T5, on the way to catching a flight. The blog can be viewed on youtube here: Running an Official Marathon In Heathrow Airport - YouTube .

The video uses poetic license - I suspect that whilst they did actually run the correct distance they would have done so entirely within the tunnel that leads from T5A to T5C, and between 4am and 6am prior to the first Belfast flight out. The film showing them running around the shops area (4 to 6 floors above the tunnel) would have been filmed later. The run will have been conducted with full permission from HAL (and BA would have been notified) - note that whilst running (for a flight) is permitted within the terminal they would have been prevented from filming if they didn't have permission. They ran the half marathon rather than the full marathon because you are only allowed to check in two hours before your domestic flight.

Nevertheless it is still a notable achievement to have done a 67 minute half marathon whilst waiting for your departure - though personally I'll stick to having a coffee and croissant.

Roderick Hoffman

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

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