baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club

BA Athletics Club News Digest 10th May 2021

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

For Coronavirus related restrictions and advice see News_Coronavirus_Guidance_April_2021.shtml [no changes].

Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps]

This Week's and Future Solo 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, such as the weekend achievement, 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.

Solo Mile (submit before Monday 17th May):

Run one mile and send me your time or add the details to the Facebook prompt. 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. Alternately join in at Bushy Park on Wednesday.

Weekend Achievement (by 5pm on the Monday) or use the Facebook prompt that will be added on Friday:

In-Person Events - please register in advance. Please provide suggestions and offer to organise.

There is a shared mile this week, in Bushy Park on Wednesday 12th May with a run start time of 12:30, meet near the Diana Fountain car park. There is also a NOW event at lunchtime on 19th May at Burnham Beeches. See the diary for details. I'm also doing the groundwork for an Orienteering event in Black Park, the permanent course is there and I've got access to the maps needed, so on Facebook I'll be asking what day and time will best suit.

Please register your interest for these in-person events even if you are only a possible. Either by email or using the "Signup" option on the diary entry > Roderick Hoffman (register interest) .  Future In-Person events will be added to the diary as organisers put themselves forward.

Speedbird Ladies Race Confirmation - 26th May #

We have been given permission by Hillingdon Council and Run Britain / UK Athletics to hold the Speedbird Ladies 5k race in Cranford Park on the evening of Wednesday 26th May.  The race will be over the two laps of the cross-country course (5k total). The car park closes at 20:00 so the race will start at 18:30 to enable slower runners or walkers to take part. There are no facilities in the park.

We are allowed 50 participants. We want club ladies to run so please ASAP let Steve Taylor know that you have put this evening aside for the event.  Non-members, including members of other clubs and previous Speedbird Ladies participants, will be invited up to the permitted limit of 50 participants. The invitations to non-members will be sent on Tuesday or Wednesday and we may need to have a ballet if over-subscribed. This is likely since the event will be free to enter, although a charity donation of £2 to £5 will be recommended. There will be no medals or other rewards.

Roderick Hoffman

Club-entries to Steve Taylor > SteveT@barunner.org.uk . Also let Steve know if you want him to email you or others for non-member entries.

Expect a call for marshals next week - who would be welcome to check the course beforehand.

Monthly Solo Challenge for May - Green Belt Relay! #

Remember that this month's solo challenge is to run distance runs on each of Saturday 15th May and Sunday 16th May. See last week's digest for the full details but at minimum you need to run at least 7.5miles on Saturday and at least 6miles on Sunday (6miles).  I will be setting up a Facebook prompt so that you can share in advance what you are planning - you may be able to do your "solo" runs together.

> Roderick Hoffman

Digest Distribution - not spam

I produced the first weekly digest on Monday 6th August 2012. There have been 456 Mondays since then and I'm not aware of having missed an issue - some have gone out early, more have gone late. That includes the issue of the week of 30th April 2018 when instead of preparing to issue the digest I was having holes drilled through my skull - but I still managed to get the digest out on the Thursday! There have also been a few additional "specials", such as to celebrate London Marathon stories, extra parkruns and the arrival of babies.

The current process for distributing digests is as follows:

The digest is an emailed version of a webpage. I create the page using a free webpage editor. I then convert it into a Word document. The Word document is linked to a text distribution list for the digest. This currently has 263 email addresses on it, including some deliberate duplicates. This is a text list rather than a distribution list so that I cannot accidently send an email "To" or "CC" everyone on the list, thereby exposing all of you to emails from everyone else on the list. I use a "Mailing" capability from the Word document to send the digest as separate emails to each entry in the list (so 263 emails, with the added line "Sent to name at email-address). The emails are sent from my BArunner address news@barunner.org.uk . I also, obviously, load the digest page to the website and reference it from the club's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/BARunnerUK ).

A small number of you report not receiving emails or having the emails redirected into SPAM folders. For some reason for some of you this started happening about a month ago. I have investigated, but I can find no reason at my end for this happening or a change having occurred. Specifically "news@barunner.org.uk" is not listed as a spam source by any of the major email servers.  I have not identified anything I can do to make such redirection less likely [there are lots of things I could do to make it more likely!]. I could spend club money on a redirection service...but that would not guarantee that digests were not sent to spam (look in your spam folder and see how many emails are there from legitimate sources!).

There are actions that you can take to reduce the likelihood of digests ending in your Spam folder or not arriving at all.  The tool you use for viewing emails should have a method for you to say that an email in your spam or junk folder isn't spam/junk. You should also be able to add "news@barunner.org.uk" to a "safe senders" list. If you check your emails on different devices (including phones) you may need to take such action on each device - e.g. your phone could be hiding emails from you before you get to view them on your home PC. If this is ineffective then you should contact your email service provider and ask them why individually addressed emails from news@barunner.org.uk are not being delivered to you.

It is also worth checking with me that your name and current email addresses are still in my distribution list - if you move addresses then redirection may work for a while, causing you to later on lose the emails. You can also notify me of a different or duplicate email address for yourself.

I'm always happy to add new names to the distribution list - there is no cost and the additional effort for each is negligible.

> Roderick Hoffman

PS: I check my spam folders for non-spam emails at least once everyday and there are some sources where I've tried but failed to get my email tool to redirect sound emails to my "To" folder.

Hatfield 5 @ Bovingdon results

324 finishers, the fastest in 25:11.

Measurement of the "Ten point three"

Last Wednesday I ran the traditional club 10.3 course from the old Concorde Centre, anticlockwise via Gillette Corner and back via Heston, even taking the Wentworth Road option rather than the more recently preferred Convent Way. I wasn't able to start or finish within the now Imperial College Sports Club so I ran an additional stretch towards the Queens Head to make up the distance. BUT, what distance was I making it up to? The name of the course "10.3" was rumoured to be based on the reading on a car's mileage gauge. Other attempts to measure the course had produced distances ranging from 9.8 miles to well above 10.3.

Edition 70 (June 2004) of the club's Round-the-Block newsletter (edited by Paul Goldsmith) contains an uncredited item on a new measurement of the "Gillette 10.3mile run". But it is safe to assume that its author was none other than Paul Goldsmith. He had taken a surveyor's wheel around the whole course to try to answer definitively how long the run was, and he wrote up the distances against local landmarks. In Wednesday's run I had a satellite receiver strapped to my wrist (aka a Garmin watch) so that I was able to compare its distances with Paul's, and I also made observations on the landmarks used. I've written the key points on the map here.

So, three pub landmarks have gone (along with others that weren't noted in 2004). Kershaw House, the old BA Pensions Office, has been rebuilt as a hotel and the Master Robert has been flattened and replaced with a brand new, unslept-in, IBIS hotel. But the majority of the course is unchanged, apart from the street furniture and a doubling of the cars parked outside front doors.

Paul's total distance was 16,107.45m. My watch measured 15,820m. But GPS measurements are notoriously off. My watch usually measures short - the average parkrun is recorded as 4.95km, so for it to measure 290m short in 16k is believable.

There were a couple of errors in the original text. The measurement wasn't started at the Concorde Centre Pavilion Plaque but at the "Pavilion Plague". Also the distance measured of 16,107.45metres was converted to 10.0184528miles or "10 miles 19 yards and 3 1/4 inches (approx.)". The actual conversion should be to 10.00870541miles and to "10 miles 15 yards 11 1/2 inches (approx.)". The writer of that article is sure to blame the editor for those errors. The editor would blame the type-setter (it was in those days) and the type-setter would blame the proof-reader (no automatic context spell checkers in those days). The proof-reader would, no doubt, complain about the quality of the handwriting of the writer (it was those days).

So, what is the length of the 10.3? It is impossible to answer that question - though I note in passing that my "Running" Excel Spreadsheet, used since September 1994, tells me that my "Concorde Ten" run on Wednesday counts as a 10.0185mile run.

Roderick Hoffman

Letters to the Editor

It's been a lonely week since no one has written to me. However, I did have a phone call from Jasvir Singh, to discuss the missing digest problem discussed above. We talked about his Wimbledon half-marathon reported on last week. That had been his first long race for about 18 months. But his diary was now rapidly filling up with other events - including the Hatfield Five, listed above.

> To the Editor

BA Athletics Club Records - Ten Mile races

Perhaps a big challenge with getting a ten mile record is to find and enter a race over that distance. We used to have the Cabbage Patch and Woking Ten events.  The Cabbage Patch is still being held and is our run-of-the-month for October, on the 17th (Welcome to the Cabbage Patch 10). 

To qualify as a record the event has to be competitive and accurately measured and the participant has to be a paid-up member of the club and wearing a club vest (or in an in-house organised event). Members for whom BA is a second claim club may need permission from their first claim club for them to run in a BA vest and claim the record (so the same performance cannot be claimed by two different clubs).

If you know better please send us your claim - we want to get these in the best shape possible. New records or questions: Stats@barunner.org.uk . 

Roderick Hoffman obo Paul Brandon

* That is the only record held by Melody...but it has lasted 33 years so far.

** Barry holds four of the five "Open" longer distance road records: 5 Mile, 10k, 10 Mile and Marathon.  Andrew Eynon holds the half-marathon record.  Barry also holds the 5k MV55 record.

Reunion 5k # (copied from parkrun's email)

The plan for parkrun is still to return in England from 5th June. 134 venues already have landowner permission to return. However both Bushy Park and the National Trust have indicated that they would not be willing until "Roadmap Step 4", due at the earliest on 21st June, which would probably mean the return of all parkruns being pushed back to 26th June. A positive demonstration of safe running of running events can only help with parkrun's case. The Reunion 5k is also a club points scoring run (as well at the Green Belt Relay).

Roderick Hoffman

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.

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