The logo of the baRUNNER website. HOME NEWS DIARY

baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club

The logo of the baRUNNER website.
Events>

BA Athletics Club News Digest 11th November 2013

Forthcoming Events:

  • Wednesday 13th November - Club Winter Quiz - Concorde Centre from 20:00 - Steve Hillier (details below)
  • Wednesday 27th November - 5 mile Handicap - Concorde Centre from 18:00 (to finish around 19:00)
  • Saturday 30th November - Club Featured parkrun - Black Park for 09:00

New members and non-members of all fitness levels and abilities are welcome at all of these events.

The full events diary is on the club website at: http://www.barunner.org.uk/Event Diary.shtml. UPDATED 11th November 2013.

This news digest is being sent to you because you are on the BA Athletics Club email list.  To be removed please email us at news@barunner.org.uk. Difficulty viewing this email? Read it off the website instead - http://www.barunner.org.uk/News Latest.shtmlDo you know someone who might appreciate being on the mailing list?  Let us know


Quiz Night 13th November from 20:00 at the Concorde Centre

Quiz night Wednesday November 13th, 8pm, at the Concorde Centre. Come as a team, come as an individual, just come and enjoy yourselves! Everyone is welcome, you don't have to be a section member and you don't have to be brilliant. Just look forward to having your grey cells tested! Entry is just £1 per head, with all proceeds going to our club charity, White Lodge. (You can donate more if you wish!)

See you there,

Steve Hillier


Men's Surrey League XC Div 3/4 9th November Roundshaw Downs for 15:00

Hi all,

The men's second cross country race of the season took place at Roundshaw Downs on Saturday 9th . We had a good turnout of 9 runners + 1 guest. We finished a very good 3rd on the day with 3 runners in the top 9 in div 4 and now lie second overall (Bring it on).   Paul Knechtl led the team home finishing a excellent 3rd overall closely followed by Gary Rushmer in 8th & John Taylor in 9th.   Credit  also to Steve (the bolt) Hillier, it took him over 2 hours to get to the course but he ran the last 200 meters of the race in 20 seconds (eat your heart out Usain).  See you on Monday night training at the track to see the legend with top coach Eddie.  

Look forward to seeing you all at our next fixture which is on Saturday 11th Jan 2014 at Oxshott with start time 2.30pm.

 Division 4 results:

Paul Knechtl   3rd place: 28.53
Gary Rushmer  8th place: 32.27
John Taylor    9th place:  32.29
Barry Walters 18th place: 33.24
Simon Turton   24th place: 34.31
Mark Taylor    28th place: 35.12
Graham Taylor  43rd place: 37.13
Neil Frediani   47th place: 39.31
Steve Hillier  57th place: 59.04

Anybody wishing to take part in the national x/c championships in Nottingham on 22nd Feb 2014 (Teams or Individual) let me know as I have some entry forms. Closing date to send forms off 6th Jan.

Thanks Gary Rushmer. E- mail: gary.rushmer@btinternet.com or phone: 07927930414


Club family parkrun results and stats for 9th November 2013

Not many parkrunners this week due to the men's Cross Country event - but there were a few including three doing volunteer duties.  Steve Newell points out that this coming Saturday our club family total of runs is likely to pass 2013... in the year 2013!  This will make 2013 unique.

parkrun growth

Now just for a moment imagine that you are the Chief Executive of an airline and your growth figures for the last ten years looked like the graph above.  You would feel very optimistic about the future and you would have Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and other manufacturers queuing up to sell you new aircraft. So what is this graph?  It shows the growth of parkrun since it's inception in 2004.  It has grown from one 5k event in Bushy Park, London to 325 weekly events worldwide and from 13 runners that first Saturday to 49,649 last week (and there had been over 50,000 the previous week). The growth rate has been almost doubling every twelve months. This is no longer a UK only phenomena - it covers eight countries with more coming next year.  Take Australia - this year there have already been 34 new parkruns in Australia with another five on the way to bring the total there to 52!  One Australian parkrun last week attracted a Bushy Park size field of 944 parkrunners.

Bushy Challenge 16th November: Neil and I are going head-to-head next week at the home of parkrun Bushy Park - same parkrun, same day, same conditions.  This table shows how close we are currently.  Others are welcome to join us - especially Tony, Joe and Scott.

  Average of recent fast parkruns  best
Roderick Hoffman 24:34 23:39
Neil Frediani 24:28 24:16
Tony Hird 25:00 23:49
Joe Nolan 24:06 22:47
Scott Davison 24:03 22:47

Roderick Hoffman

An addition to the family: "Saturday's parkrun was Bonnie's inaugural parkrun, and was meant to be a slow run but Bonnie seems to have the same competitive instinct as the rest of the family, we started at the back and she just wanted to keep overtaking the whole way round, my arm was more tired than my legs at the end from pulling her back! For those who don't know Bonnie, she has 4 legs. I think if we attached her to Chris Kelly rather than me she could easily go under 20 minutes!" Richard Ruffell

Steve's parkrun stats


Magic Mile Thursday 7th November Results

Perhaps one day the Magic Mile event will have the same growth pattern as parkrun.

05-Sep-13  03-Oct-13  Difference  07-Nov-13  Difference  Best Time
Paul Knechtl 00:04:56 00:04:56 -00 seconds 00:05:05 +09 seconds 00:04:56
Bernard Sexton 00:05:39 00:05:39
Jeremy Short 00:05:49 00:05:49
Matthew Stratful 00:05:44 00:05:52 +08 seconds 00:05:44
Richard Ruffell 00:06:10 00:06:03 -07 seconds 00:06:05 +02 seconds 00:06:03
Helen Lawrenson 00:06:35 00:06:16 -19 seconds 00:06:16
Deby Helsdon 00:06:48 00:06:21 -27 seconds 00:06:21 -00 seconds 00:06:21
Simon Ashford 00:06:18 00:06:22 +04 seconds 00:06:18
Neil Frediani 00:07:18 00:07:10 -08 seconds 00:07:11 +01 seconds 00:07:10
Mandy Warren 00:08:22 00:08:22

Full results and details including from previous magic mile runs - linked here

Paul Knechtl


Mailbox... 

All,
Just back from Nice after clocking (just) another sub 3:30 marathon - 3:29:42. Nice is a great place to escape the onset of a British winter - the temperature was well into the 20's over the weekend and we were eating outside for lunch and dinner! The race started early at 8:00am and I had decided to try and follow the 3:15 pacers for as long as I could. I kept them in sight until about mile 14 when I started slowing because of a very strong westerly head-wind that got stronger and stronger as we got nearer to Cannes. The course was mainly very flat as it followed the coast road all the way but there were 3 or 4 hilly bits - the worst when we got the Antibes and had to climb steeply up to the old castle. At the end we had the best give-aways I have had in a long while - a technical t-shirt, a good quality medal, a sports ruck-sack, as many bottled drinks as you could carry, cereal bars, all sorts of fruit and crusty current rolls!  
Piers Keenleyside

This Sunday 10th November Natalie and I decided to run the Grand Union Half as a different way to do a long run. As neither of us have done any real longer run training for many months  this was to be a steady run rather than a race. I think the last time I ran anything like this distance was just before I pulled up injured in the Berkhamsted half back in March.
When we collected our numbers at the start Natalie wondered why she had a red number and I had a blue....I pointed out she was a girl and I am a boy!  However looking round this quickly proved to be the wrong reason. When we entered I put 1.45.00 as my predicted time and 1.44.59 for Natalie on the basis she always just goes ahead in the last 2 yards. Well it appears the race starts in waves to thin out the numbers as the canal path is not very wide, and the red wave was 1.44.59 and under and the blue wave was 1.45.00 to 1.59.59.  Oops! So the red wave started with a blue runner tagged on to the back of the group.
We were aiming for 8 minute miles and went through 10 miles in 79.59.
Good pacing dad. The pace then picked up a little from here on as Natalie's competitive instinct started to kick in, we ran the last 5k just 9 seconds slower than I had run the park run the day before.
As for the half results Natalie and my clock finish times were exactly the same to the nearest hundredth of a second at 1:43:48, so no final surge to create a 1 second gap at the end. But our chip times were 0.5 second apart as I had started just behind so victory for the old man.  Who said it wasn't a race!!
We had met Colon Haylock at the start and we met up again at the end. Colin had also been planning a steady run, targeting 1.36. He finished in 1.35.47, so pretty good pacing from Colin as well.
For those interested in running this in the future it is a well organised race from Uxbridge to Watford, with 12 miles on the canal. This makes it quite hard going as the canal path is uneven at best, with many large puddles to be avoided, a few bridges, the odd gate to squeeze through and several cyclists trying manfully to cycle the opposite direction to the 874 runners. Certainly not one for a PB, but as I always enjoy running along the canal it is one I may do again.
Richard Ruffell

Dear all, I was, as a Marlow Half marshal, privileged to see the three BA runners through; especially my old comrade-in-arms and fellow whistle blower at Lambeth Bridge during the London Cycle Ride event.
Attn Mr Hillier: I can tell you Jasvir looked intrepid as usual??!!
Andy Rayner.

Hi,   I hope you like my new website which is full of brilliant half and full marathons in the UK and around Europe;   http://www.marathonandahalf.co.uk   If you think some of the British Airways AC members may find it useful it would be great if you could link to it next time you are updating your website.   Thanks   Matt Davies Mossley Hill AC


News for the next BAAC News Digest? I also need a club running related photograph every week so help me out here.

Please let us have your ideas for how club communications can be improved and please send us items for inclusion in the next Digest.  Results, news, feedback, jokes, stories - send it to us at news@barunner.org,uk.  You can copy Paul Brandon and Roderick Hoffman in BUT the news@ address is the one that we use when the digest is compiled.


Club website:

www.barunner.org.uk.


 

      

Full Index