baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club

BA Athletics Club News Digest 13th July 2020

Events - see below:

Inclusions, with photos, please to Roderick Hoffman at news@barunner.org.uk.

Solo Events Calendar

All unrestricted races are off until at least the end of July, but the club continues to operate with the Solo runs listed above - for restrictions and advice see the Coronavirus footnote at the end of this digest.  We are undertaking some shared activities. We need to continue to work with the maximum group size of six and the social distancing gap of 2metres but England Athletics have promised to update their guidance this week. Following their guidance enables us to operate activities with their insurance. Any member can organise a shared activity by following the guidance, filling in the risk assessment form and notifying myself or Steve Hillier that you have done so in advance of the event.

Roderick Hoffman

Midweek Challenge - Street Respelling

This week Street Spelling returns as the midweek challenge. This time it will have a slightly looser format. See the web page for the full instructions but in short:

Below there is a list of 26 words, each worth a number of points.  Each word consists of eight different letters, including letters across the whole alphabet. The points each word is worth is based on the scarcity of the eight letters as start letter of street names. So for example "B" will be worth one point but "Q" will be worth ten points. You can choose which word to take on, and when to do your run, up until the end of Friday. The points you achieve will be deducted as minutes from your time and distances of 200m from your distance. So, for instance, if you took 24 minutes to run 4km to complete a word worth 27 points you would score -3minutes and -1.4km. The lowest score (highest negative) wins! Whilst you can do this on any day and at any time it might be more fun to agree to do it at the same time as anyone living near you - and see if you see them on the way around!

The words are: Actively (32pts),  Backmost (18pts),  Carousel (22pts),  Dogwatch (19pts),  Earldoms (19pts),  Facedown (22pts),  Gamblers (15pts),  Hangover (26pts),  Improves (28pts),  Javelins (33pts),  Knowable (22pts),  Landform (22pts),  Majestic (26pts),  Networks (23pts),  Olympiad (29pts),  Projects (23pts),  Quotable (32pts),  Roughest (24pts),  Shambled (16pts),  Thankful (27pts),  Unbacked (25pts),  Vampires (26pts),  Walkover (26pts),  Xenolith (35pts),  Yourself (29pts),  Zealotry (33pts) [but see the web page for a more useful layout of the words].

You can start from either your home or from your place of work - or from the nearest street-sign to either of those. Once run, email me to let me know your time and distance, the word you took on and to confirm that you got all of the letters.

Roderick Hoffman

Midweek Challenge - Virtual Race and Shared 5k Runs #

The winner of the Virtuality 5K round two is Emma Moreton. Congratulations to Emma and to Simon Turton as first male and runner up.

Close finishes includes Denis Foxley and Roderick at only one second apart, with Denis having discovered afterwards that he had actually run further than 5k but not having measured it beforehand it would make it difficult for me to estimate a time so I have left the result with Denis’ recorded time. I was also pipped at the post by Amanda by just three seconds.

Three venues were represented, Northala Fields, Bedfont Lakes and Maidenhead and taking the top two fastest finishers combined times from those venues brings Northala Fields in as the fastest venue with a combined time 26 seconds faster than Bedfont lakes. (I didn’t include myself in the Northala venue as I ran on a different day and a slightly different route.)

The fastest finger award goes to Kelly with just 6 seconds between her WhatsApp time and actual time. This was even faster than Roderick’s 8 seconds from round 1. Best photo award to Sarah Gordon for the ducks crossing the road, showing that it was a bit wet for some runners. Well done to everyone who took part. 

Steve Taylor (soloruns@barunner.org.uk)

July Run-of-the-Month - England Athletics Virtual 5k Road Running Championships (11-13 July) Results #

Note that the "Place" and "Pos" columns were when I extracted the data with some competitors still to file their results. At the time the fastest time registered was 00:13:43 (men) and 00:15:12 (ladies) and the slowest time from 1667 finishers was 0:59:39.

I was pleased with my time - on the same course as Wednesday but 30seconds faster. Amanda was 8 seconds faster than earlier in the week but Sarah topped us both being nearly two minutes faster.

Because this was the club's Run-of-the-Month for July all the above score a point in our round-the-block table.  If you enjoyed this...or wish that you had taken part, then please propose a club Run-of-the-Month for August that you can run.

Roderick Hoffman

SOLO Activity Achievement Weekend 10th to 13th July 2020

This week 21 colleagues recorded weekend activity achievements, the same number as last week, but this week we also had the 9 participants in the Virtual 5k so the total was back to the 30 level we were at in April and May. There may have been 21 participants both last week and this but the distance covered (run and walked) this week summed to almost exactly 100km less.

Good to hear from Alastair for the first time for a while. He says he might try the Street Spelling this week.

Kayaking is a new activity for us this week (thanks Emma) though note that a long term but rarely seen member Debbie Helsdon is a keen kayaker.

Kelly reported on Facebook about her duck rescue providing the reason for a second duck picture this week.   They were J walking near a roundabout on the Southern Perimeter Road until Kelly acted as sheepdog and shepherd. 

Please submit your best exercise achievement of next 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 Update

It was parkrun resumption week 2 in New Zealand with numbers down slightly on week 1 but bolstered by a healthy number (212) of first timers.

Steve Newell

Situations Vacant - Club Event Planner

Neil is moving on and we would like someone who is willing to give a little bit of their time to the club on a monthly basis to be our Events Planner. We are flexible but responsibilities could include:

• Look around at what other clubs do to publicise their events to their own members,
• Choose a suitable tool or mechanism (currently Neil maintains an Excel Sheet which he sends me to copy-and-paste into the website. Whilst that works, we should be able to do better),
• Either make the updates on a monthly basis OR oversee everyone else making the updates if the selected tool allows,
• Suggest or work with others to propose monthly ROM (run-of-the-month) and CIE (club in-house) events,
• Set up and run the occasional club event

Contact me for more details or to express interest.

Roderick Hoffman

WARR 2020

We got the news this week that this year's World Airline Road races, due to happen in Hawaii from October 23rd to 25th, are being cancelled. This was no surprise given the existing coronavirus situation in continental USA. It is frustrating that Hawaii has very low instances of coronavirus...but understandable that they want it to stay that way!

All hotel bookings made through the WARR hotel link will be automatically cancelled on 25th July. Any event entry fees will be automatically refunded from 1st August (minus the $3:50 admin fee) UNLESS you want them deferred until the following year in which case send an email to worldairlineroadrace@gmail.com before July 20th, with the subject of the email as “DEFER” along with your name (or names of people registered if you entered more than one person).

I'm happy to answer any queries on this,

Roderick Hoffman

Coronavirus Warning Footnote [changes from last week underlined or struck-through (no changes)]

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 replaced (3rd July 2020) and now says that people can meet in groups of up to 30. However England Athletics has not yet updated their guidance hence our advise remains largely as it was (but should shortly change):

• Do not conduct a solo run if you are unwell, particularly if you have symptoms of the coronavirus such as a fever, or if you share a house with someone who has these symptoms,
• Do not conduct a solo run if you consider yourself to be, or others consider you to be, vulnerable, such as being elderly OR with pre-existing health conditions,
• You may drive to outdoor publicly accessible open spaces irrespective of distance, but you should follow social distancing guidance whilst you are there. We should still be avoiding public transport except for essential journeys, and do not share cars with people outside your household,
• In England you may meet with up to five other persons for your exercise outside the home - e.g. other runners and coaches. But do not share athletics equipment and continue to maintain the social distancing with anyone you do meet up with. You are recommended to minimise the total number of different people you meet with over the days and weeks,
• As you run, keep 2m away from all others including those you run with as well as those you meet on the run, by default diverting around those you meet (don't leave it up to them to avoid you),
• Do not push yourself too far, this may weaken your defences against the virus and/or increase the probability of requiring assistance. We all have different limits so you need to judge what would be too far for you,
• If government instructions are updated to limit or prevent exercising outside your homes please respect such instructions - we should be fighting the virus, not authority.

If you are unwell yourself, especially if you have symptoms of the virus:

• Put your needs first...
• but please let me (Roderick Hoffman) or Steve Hillier know of your condition/status, BUT we will keep it to ourselves UNLESS you ask us to pass information on.

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

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