baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club
BA Athletics Club News Digest 8th June 2020Events - see below:Inclusions, with photos, please to Roderick Hoffman at news@barunner.org.uk. Solo Events Calendar
All side-by-side races are off until at least the end of June, but the club continues to operate with the Solo runs listed above - these ARE still permitted but see the Coronavirus footnote at the end of this digest. There are no updates to this - the maximum group size is still six and the club would have no insurance cover were we to organise a face-to-face event. Hopefully we can start to return to side-by-side training and events in July. BAAC Committee Meeting 3rd JuneIt is perhaps a sad reflection on the current situation that our committee meeting makes the headlines! But the discussions we had in last week's ZOOM meeting (plus written submissions from other committee members) are relevant to positive changes. Decision on our AGM (due on 22nd July): We agreed not to hold the AGM in July but instead to generate the annual reports for that date and make them available to members. We would then plan on having the AGM in October to be held either at a venue if restrictions have been sufficiently relaxed or as an electronic meeting. We do want YOU to provide the following for 22nd July: Firstly, any questions you would like brought up at the AGM,
Please communicate with Steve Hillier (club secretary) on either of these. We then discussed how we could return to side-by-side training and racing. The current limitation on a maximum group size of six means that any event currently would have to have a booking process to avoid seven or more turning up. But as soon as the group size is increased beyond about ten we should be fine and we considered that time trials and orienteering might be events that would work well with social distancing rules. We also discussed what we would do with virtual activities following the ending of lockdown. Some of these have been very successful at pulling the club together including with members who we would never expect to see at regular club evenings. The thought going forward is that we might decide to meet at the Bedfont Club every other week throughout the year and use the alternate weeks for virtual midweek challenges. Note though that this would be dependent on organisers stepping forward for some of them. Roderick Hoffman (obo the whole committee) MembershipWe are now well into the new membership year, yet many of last year's members have not yet renewed their membership of the club. We are not putting people under pressure to do so, but we do appreciate any members who are able to rejoin as encouragement for what we are trying to do for members and their friends at this time. And it only costs £9 for the whole year. Details of membership is on this page: Club_Membership.shtml and payment can be made by "contactless" electronic transfer of £9 (BAAC membership only) or £24 (covering BAAC and English Athletics enrollment). We recommend England Athletics enrollment since this helps support England's athletes through these difficult times. For additional details (including checking to see if you have paid) contact either the membership secretary Alan Friar (Membership@barunner.org.uk), or the treasurer Chris Kelly (Treasurer@barunner.org.uk). From our parent BA Clubs
A reminder that BA Clubs remains open to membership enquiries and still offers various membership benefits. Details can be seen at http://www.baclubs.com/ which this week's features a profile of Vanessa (who keeps promising to run with us one day). Midweek ChallengesThis week we have a "Street Spelling" event as the midweek challenge. In short you will be given a word and your objective will be to visit local streets whose initial letters spell out the word you have been given. This is being held as a competitive event. 13 people have pre-entered. More are welcome and can select start times from 8am to 8pm on Wednesday or Thursday but please do so ASAP. At that time you will be sent a selection of three eight letter words and you can choose any one of them to run. Reply within an hour with your chosen word and start running because the clock will be ticking from that moment on. Once you get back home text to say you have finished and the clock will stop. If possible, you should be able to provide a GPS trace of your run and photographic evidence of each street sign but allowance will be made for those without smartphones. There will be two winners - the person who completed the task in the shortest time and the person whose route was shortest (which could be won by a walker). Anyone unable or unwilling to leave their house at this time are allowed to compete to be the "shortest route" winner by plotting the route they would have used. Detailed instructions are here. We need you to pre-enter this event, this is so that we can assign you a starter (of myself, Simon Turton and Jain Reid). Please send me the following details NOW! The later you enter, the more restrictive I may have to be on start times:
Send to me {news@barunner.org.uk} Next week we have another Track-on-Field event. The week after Amanda Coombs has offered to organise a local run, more details nearer the time. I've moved my "I Spy" event to a weekend. In this you will be asked to spot various things as you run and I've raised a poll in Facebook to ask for ideas on what we could be trying to spot ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/636199849751546/permalink/3123008527737320/ ). Midweek Challenge Solo Mile Results and Graphs
The graph shows that most of us are keeping our fitness and some of us are improving...but, sorry, Melanie isn't. We should arrange to meet at your door to give you some pacing support and encouragement. Most of us are being remarkably consistent with our last two runs. Christine has slipped by just two seconds, I've slipped by one second, Harjit and Kelly have run exactly the same pace, Simon has improved by one second and Stephen by two. But had we been running together it might have been a different story - Kelly had Gary Rushmer (jnr) one second in front of her, Christine would have had Denis breathing down her neck but would have had me just in front and Amanda would have had Michael just three seconds in front of her. We should soon have the option to run together...though that doesn't mean that we will! There will be a mile next month, virtual and/or real, focused on Thursday 2nd July. Roderick Hoffman Late Result: Joe Nolan 0:10:26, 15 seconds slower than last month. SOLO activity achievement weekend 5th to 8th June 2020Only 27 colleagues recorded weekend activity achievements this week which is the first time since the 21st March we've been under 30. I know of a couple of injuries stopping runners but the low number could also be because some of us have been called back to work from the start of June. "Do you remember those good old days, when we were in lockdown?". There is also a new activity recorded this week - Amanda's Open Water Swim.
Again, submit your best exercise achievement of the weekend by filling in the following form and sending it to me OR replying to the message on Facebook (or any other messaging format to me).
Roderick Hoffman {submit by 5pm on Monday} parkrun UpdateA fellow parkrun StatsGeek reported "I've just had a quick look at the stats (as you do) and noticed something a bit strange. I was expecting the total number of runs by named parkrunners to have crept up since the last time I looked (23 March), as people emailed event teams to have 'Unknowns' replaced, but in fact the number's gone down. 23 March: 4,161,443 unique parkrunners with 53,153,062 runs between them. 6 June: 4,161,421 unique parkrunners with 53,152,518 runs between them. Net loss: 22 parkrunners and 544 runs." We concluded that the reduction is people being so ashamed of their parkrun record (or for some other reason) that they have made a data request to parkrun HQ to have their name and data removed from the parkrun database. They will have been replaced in the results with additional "Unknowns" so your place and time will not have been impacted (though your gender place may have improved). Roderick Hoffman Coronavirus Warning Footnote [changes from last week underlined or struck-through]In the UK exercise outside is permitted because it will boost physical and mental health and because the risk of catching Coronavirus outdoors is very low if social distancing advice is kept to. The relevant law in England has been updated (1st June 2020) and now says what you can't do, rather than only allowing you do do a limited number of things. The sections that refer to the activities of the club are "Restrictions on movement" and "Restrictions on gatherings". In short you can't stay overnight anywhere other than at home and you can't meet with more than one other person indoors or more than five other persons outdoors. Taking into account the law and official guidance we advise you as follows:
If you are unwell yourself, especially if you have symptoms of the virus:
Next Digest - Results, news, pictures, feedback, jokes, stories - send them to the editor, Roderick Hoffman, at news@barunner.org.uk. 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.Club website: www.barunner.org.uk.
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Secondly,
any nominations for committee members including yourselves. There are three
current members who would like to take a step back and we could accommodate
anyone who felt they had a little bit of time to further the club. We would
particularly welcome ladies on the committee - we do have two currently, though
they both gave their apologies for not appearing in the Zoom call hence not
being in the photo either.
The
results are above and the comparison with previous runs is shown in the graph.