baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club

BA Athletics Club News Digest 7th October 2013

Not the usual format for the digest this week since it's being typed in a café in Simon's Town, Cape Town. Note also that the website on-line copy will also not be loaded until my return. Roderick Hoffman

Forthcoming Events

·         Saturday 19th October - first Ladies and Mens Surrey League Cross Countries both at Lightwater

·         Wednesday 30th October – First Winter Handicap of the year – five miles from 18:00 from the Concorde Centre.

·         Sunday 3rd November – Club Run-of-the-Month - Marlow Half Marathon – contact Chris Kelly for info but apply on-line promptly.

The full events diary is on the club website at: http://www.barunner.org.uk/Event Diary.shtml . This has been updated to cover events October through December.

World Airline Road Race 2013 Stellenbosch 13th October – Awards

The British Airways team did brilliantly this year and the following is a provisional list of the trophies won:

Note – Air France are include above not because of a One World takeover but because half of the Air France ladies team is already established within the BA Athletics Club hence it would be rude not to include the other half (but perhaps I'm biased – Helen did catch me giving away one of my own shirts to Patricia).

Other BA Road Racing Team participants were John and Benita Scaife, Roderick Hoffman, Gareth Snook, Dave Rimmer, Tim and Jack Bellars, Neil Frediani and Marion Woodhouse (Air France) so the total team size (excluding Patricia and non-runners) was twenty.

As for write-ups of the WARR event...see next week (hopefully written by some of the other BA participants) (and perhaps with some positions and times).

Roderick Hoffman

Future WARR venues announcements

The following were announced during WARR 2013...

“WARR 2014 will be in Dublin at the start of October 2014”

and

“WARR 2015 will be in Dubai towards the end of October 2015”.

Some interpretation of these announcements is appropriate:

At the moment the Dublin announcement is based upon an understanding between the International WARR committee and the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. Air Lingus have NOT yet agreed to the proposal and, in my view (and that of some other team captains), it is inconceivable that a successful WARR event could be held in Dublin without Air Lingus being significantly involved. Discussion is occurring between representatives of the International Committee and the Air Lingus team.

The Dubai announcement sounds more certain – representatives from Emirates and Air Dubai are very keen for the event to be held in Dubai and will work together to make this happen.

Roderick Hoffman

parkrun results for Saturday 12^th October

Also Piers Keenleyside was a parkrun volunteer at Gunnersbury this week.

Brian Bennet had the performance of the day (based on WAVA). Between us we also clocked up two new parkrun venues bringing the club's total up to 73 and two age category records. Those doing the Root 44 parkrun were (probably) not running flat out since this was a warm-up run for the next day's WARR races – see write-up above for WARR and below for Root 44.

Steve Newell (note – website parkrun statistics will not be updated until Roderick's return and not all of those listed above are normally included in the “BAAC parkrun family” – it isn't that we have strict rules on membership...more that we aren't 100% sure ourselves on what rules we should have!)

Root 44 parkrun 12th October 2013

This was a treble opportunity – firstly for the BAAC WARR competitors to fit in a Saturday morning parkrun despite being a long long way from our home parkruns, secondly for us to have a warm-up/acclimatisation run the day before the WARR races and thirdly an opportunity to introduce other airline runners from various nations to the parkrun concept.

On the first of these we clearly succeeded with eight of us adding to our parkrun counts and John and Benita Scaife doing their first parkruns. We were also made most welcome by the Root 44 parkrun director Elana Meyer (South African Olympic Silver Medal winner at Barcelona) and some of us were able to enjoy a variety of breakfast options at the Root 44 Market held at the same vineyard immediately after the run.

On the second count we were worried that perhaps our warm-up run was a bit too challenging – the course ran up and down the fields of the vineyard but did incorporate one significant climb (length and steepness) and a steep descent also. The surface was gravel and earth and mainly sound apart from one short boggy section.

On the third opportunity we managed to get 11 to 14 WARRiors to join us (some uncertainty because some didn't finish and/or didn't have barcodes). Two from Denmark already had seven parkruns between them, Dave from New Zealand was on his second parkrun having done his first in New Zealand the previous weekend. Then there were three from the USA who went away wondering why there wasn't a parkrun in Seattle yet. What the others thought I don't know - but they seemed to have enjoyed the experience. Although we weren't putting a great deal of effort in between us we managed to get the local parkrun age category records for the three male age groups 60-64, 65-69 and 70-74 – that says a great deal about the quality of the airline runners across those male age categories. We also boosted the local attendance to close to a record.

Roderick Hoffman

Material for next week? Hit “reply”.

Club website: www.barunner.org.uk.