baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club
BA Athletics Club News Digest 12th December 2016Events:
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. *Club Event Map: [long Google-map hyperlink you would not type in] Not for you, no longer interested? remove me please. Difficulty viewing this email? Read it off the website instead - http://www.barunner.org.uk/News Latest.shtml. Running related gossip and chat: Facebook Page "BARunner" https://www.facebook.com/BARunnerUK/ RtA - Round Heathrow Airport Run - 29th December at Waterside at MiddayThis run will circumnavigate the airport with little interaction with perimeter roads and A-roads. I have mapped 13 and 15 mile options and also if you take an Oyster card with you then you can stop at Hatton Cross halfway (7miles) and get the tube to T5 which is about a mile from the start/finish. A large amount of the course is on trails and in some places you can choose trail or road. We will set off at 12 midday promptly from Moor Lane at the back of the BA Waterside offices and run the courses anti-clockwise. The plan is to run it in approximately 2-2:30 hours and possibly [Ed: Probably] retire to the Five Bells pub in Harmondsworth village (or go back to work for some!). To get to the start by road enter Moor Lane from Harmondsworth village - from the roundabout that connects A3044 Hatch Lane to Holloway Lane turn down High Street, pass the Five Bells pub on the right (next to the church), and after another 400m there is a narrow bridge and there is parking in the road on the right hand side both before and after the bridge - on a single yellow line but permitted outside of school starting and finishing times. If arriving from the South then take the A3044 up to the A4, cross at the lights (in the left lane) and turn left into Accommodation lane and park in the second car park on the left or around the corner into Moor Lane there is a small amount of on road parking . To walk to the start, turn right into Moor Lane at the end of Accommodation lane . Course maps are at: http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/1381830652 for 15miles (Dark Green and Red in the extracted map below) and http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/1381805632 for 13miles (Dark Green and Light Green in the map).
Please let me know at neil.frediani@ba.com if you think that you might run it so that I can get in touch if there are any late changes. Winter Solstice Parkway Mile Relay 2016 followed by Club's 35th Anniversary event - 21st DecemberCelebrate the longest night of the year by running half a mile alongside the A312 towards Hayes and then back again. In accordance with tradition Harry Wild will be the turnaround point. Meet at the pavilion at 6 p.m. before heading for the start at the Field of Hope (A312/M4 junction) via Church Road. Entries (name and estimate of time to run the mile) to Steve Newell by midnight on 20th December. Steve will choose teams provide for as close a race as possible. Please let Steve know if you want to enter as a family or predetermined team. This might be the last time that ladies can participate in the Brian Forrester challenge - to win a bottle of Champagne by running the mile in under six minutes. Ed Based on the anniversary event acceptances I've currently estimated 31 potential runners for the mile (before dropouts) so I've challenged Steve to ensure that there are 35 runners to celebrate the 35 years of the club. How he is going to sort out the teams for this - and how he ensures that the total run time gets us back to the clubhouse in plenty of time - is his problem but please assist him by confirming your availability and target time. We NEED 35 runners. There may be a half-mile option for some if required. The Mile will be followed by the club's 35th Anniversary event. We've got 53 members and former members signed up for this but more are welcome - please let us know to expect you.
Notify us that you intend to make it to our anniversary event - by email, Facebook, Morse code etc. We need to know for the catering. Who are you and what do you want?I don't know how well you know how this club is run. Perhaps you imagine that the club is run by long in the tooth, senior citizens who gather round a log fire once in a while and discuss new ways of spending the club's wealth. Perhaps there is some truth in that. However every so often over the years the club committee asks itself how well it knows the club's membership and how well are the activities of the club meeting the needs or desires of those members. More often than not the committee concludes that they don't know. This usually leads to the design of a survey into who the members are and what they think the club should do for them. I've been looking back over the records from such surveys... I've found the results of a survey conducted back in 1990. On that occasion 30% said that they wanted to see greater emphasis on training evenings, and 33% said they wanted to see less emphasis on Triathlons. I'm not sure that those wanting more structured training got their wish but certainly there is less of an emphasis on Triathlons these days (but we were VERY BIG on triathlons at that time). Also 53% said that the club members should be encouraged to enter 'club nominated' events and this probably led to the adoption of a Run-of-the-Month with entry co-ordinators that continues to this day - albeit with low take-up these days. There was also a survey in 1999. Amongst the written responses were suggestions that the club got into Triathlons. Others suggested that new joiners were put off by the word "Athletics" in the club name and because all of our in-house events were races rather than fun events - and also perhaps we could have more training events. The most popular activities were Road Running (rated by 67%) and Cross Country (37%) - and "Hashing was a popular third or fourth choice" [now - when did you last run a Hash?]. The lack of lady members led to the suggestion and adoption of a Ladies Captain - although it was also recommended that AH be excluded. I organised a survey in 2011. The results of this emphasised the need for good electronic communication and that led me to adopt the weekly digest for club news and announcements. It was suggested that we could have more structured training (I've seen that suggestion before somewhere!). To the question "What events do you partake in?" 50% of the respondees ticked the "Park Runs" {SIC} box. This was a bit of a revelation at the time and led to the club introducing an every-other-month club visit to a different local parkrun. One direct consequence of that initiative was me becoming a renowned parkrun tourist! Another consequence of that survey was the emphasis since to encourage new members from outside the British Airways/BA Clubs background. So that was five years ago. The club has changed a great deal since and we have been getting new members from new groups - such as from local parkruns and joining because of the London Marathon opportunities the club gets. So does the committee know what the membership wants now? We'd be foolish to think that we did, so in the New Year we'll have another survey to find out who our members are and what they want from the club. I wouldn't expect radical change (do you really want structured training?) but I firmly predict that we'll learn something that will change what the club does or the way it does it. But I don't know what that change will be (so perhaps it will be the structured training!). Roderick Hoffman obo the club committee Club parkrun results for Saturday 10th December
Gary Rushmer (19:59) led the way with a top ten finish over his home course at Bedfont Lakes. Trish McCabe (25:51) has run over a 100 times at Bedfont but this week ventured over to the shrine at Bushy Park and came away with a course pb and indeed her fastest ever time at a parkrun in UK. She has run faster, once, in Ireland (24:09) at Cootehill. Steve (23:51) and Linda Dodsworth (27:14) who do most of their runs in the North of England were at Orpington. Those times are the new club course records there. Roderick Hoffman (27:21) travelled to Portrush in the North of Northern Ireland. His first parkrun run entirely on sand! Months of planning had gone into spotting a date when the tide would be low between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. on a Saturday. Although the tidal range at Portrush is only a modest 2 metres the water had retreated sufficiently for an altitude of minus one metre to be recorded by his Garmin. This suggests that the satellites really are very accurately positioned these days. The editor would be very interested to hear from anyone who thinks they might have run at the highest parkrun by any member, home or abroad. Or run at all - how far up (or down) Kilimanjaro is running possible? Caroline Cockram (30:10) re-visited Homewood Park and now just 5km short of her "250" T-shirt. Steve Newell Updated club parkrun stats (modern .xlsx file)
Running Shorts
Wings for life World Run - 7th May, 2017This is the run I do each year where the faster you run, the further you run, before David Coultard (or other celebrity driver) catches you in his car. Again there are various locations round the world hosting this event, all with a simultaneous start at 12:00 BST. The early bird entry fee is £25 and, except for the £4.17 VAT, 100% of the entry fee goes to Spinal Cord Research (Red Bull and other sponsors pay all of the event costs). I'll be running from Cambridge again but check out the website for the other worldwide locations. http://www.wingsforlifeworldrun.com/gb/en/cambridge/ . The best distance I've managed over the three years I've been doing it is 11.37miles (18.30km) but anyone faster than me could find themselves running much further and for much longer. Roderick Hoffman PS I'm setting myself the challenge to exceed my best result in this so far. What is your big event challenge next year? Write in and commit yourself! Next Digest?Results, news, pictures, feedback, jokes, stories - send it to us at news@barunner.org.uk. Club website:
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