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BA Athletics Club News Digest 14th September 2015

Events:

  • Wednesday 23rd Club "Equinox" 5k 18:00 & Social with food 20:00 @ Heston Venue
  • Wednesday 30th Brian's Relay 18:00 + Social 20:00 @ Heston Venue
  • Thursday 1st October - October Magic Mile on the Bath Road 12:45

New members and non-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.  Updated 14th September.

Running related gossip and chat: Facebook "BA Runner" (link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/636199849751546/).

No longer interested?  To be removed from the BA Athletics Club mailing list 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.shtml. 

Results: Round-the-Park Tuesday 8th September Harmondsworth Moor

Position Name Time Team
1 Dave Dixon 0:17:44
2 Bernard Sexton 0:19:48
* Matt Stratful 0:20:38
3 Tim Hawkes 0:20:39 Slow Me
4 Richard Ruffell 0:20:59
5 Helen Lawrenson F1 0:22:37
6 Steve Taylor 0:23:55
7 Piers Keenleyside 0:23:56
8 Neil Frediani 0:24:35
9 Paul Stansfield 0:25:12 Slow Me
10 Roderick Hoffman 0:25:21
11 Martin Connor 0:26:48
12 Matt Fodden 0:26:51 Slow Me
13 Helen Vincent F2 0:27:10 Slow Me

Dave Dixon returned to winning ways with another master class performance. Not only did he win by over 2 minutes, but he also broke the course record by 9 seconds (17:44). He run pretty much the whole race on his own, so sure he could have gone quicker with some competition. In the ladies race Helen Lawrenson came home first (and fifth overall) in a time of 22:37. We also had one team entry this year. So by default team Slow Me took the title with 37 points. Now somebody has laid down the gauntlet, hopefully it will inspire a few more teams to enter next year!

* Matt Stratful did complete the course but not at the same time as everyone else. So his time has been recorded in the results, but does not effect the original standings.

See you on 26th January 2016 for Round The Block.

Paul Knechtl - 10th September 2015

Wanted - one Hood to Coast relay team

Do you fancy a challenge with a difference? Do you like running relays? Would you like to run through the night? Well after a 10 year break we are looking at sending a team to the 2016 Hood to Coast Relay.

If you've joined the club in the last ten years you may be asking what is this race?

 It is a 200 mile relay from the top of Mount Hood to the coastal town of Seaside and officially the largest relay event in the world. There are 1000 teams taking part on the course with up to 12 runners in a team - it means there are up to 10,000 runners taking part in the main event alone! There are 2 other shorter competitions taking part, which add 50% more runners. Teams run in strict rotation in proper relay style throughout the night to complete the 36 stages. Unlike most other relays you run 3 times, so your involvement continues through the event.

When is it? The event will be run over Friday 26th and Saturday 27th August 2016. That’s the weekend of the Bank Holiday. We normally try to go out a few days earlier (24th) and come back a couple of days after (29th), which will be the Bank Holiday Monday.  But it is up to you when you travel.

So you might be asking why so early for this call for runners? Entries open and close for the event on 7th October 2015, 10 months before the event. The one down side is the event as a whole is not cheap. But ask anybody who has done it before and they will say it is the best event they have ever done!

To enter, we must have a minimum of 8 team members to register. We have tried to complete the event with 7 runners in the past and it just doesn’t work. 9 would be the absolute minimum, but the full 12 would be ideal. So for us to enter we need to get commitment from 11 people by the 30th September to get the cheque for the entry fee raised. When we know the entry fee (likely to be in the region of £130 per runner) we will look to collect this as a non-refundable deposit.

More details can be found on web at http://www.hoodtocoastrelay.com/race-information

Otherwise if you have another questions queries, please let us know.

Paul Knechtl & Simon Ashford - mailto:paul.a.knechtl@ba.com

Great North Run Result and Mo/No Comparison

Name BIB Club Pos Finish Time
Mo Farah 1 Newham & Essex Beagles AC 1 00:59:22
Jasvir Singh Modaher 19263 British Airways AC 24172 02:22:38

I forgot to add the following line to the table I put in last week...

  Mo Farah Roderick Hoffman  
Achievements 5000 metres 2012 Olympic, 2011, 2013 and 2015 World and 2010, 2012 and 2014 European champion;
10,000 metres the 2012 Olympic, 2013 and 2015 World and 2010 and 2014 European champion
Cross Country 2006 European champion.
Athletics Indoor Championships 2009 and 2011 European champion.
Great North Run champion 2014 and 2015.
parkrun PB 15:06 at Bushy in 2005.		 BAAC Round-the-Block champion 2012.
parkrun PB 23:39 at Fulham Palace in 2013.
  
Although this table was deliberately tongue in cheek I was inspired to keep up running by the fact that whatever your standard you can be in the same race as world class competitors - for me it was Rod Dixon in the 1983 New York Marathon and for Jasvir it was Mo Farah on Sunday.

Roderick Hoffman

Club parkrun results for Saturday 12th September 2015

12th Sept 2015

Family, Friends,+

Time

parkrun

Comment

Total Runs

Grade
Alan Anderson n/a 376
Chris Kelly 25:24 Reading 253 58%
Jonathan Cox 21:17 Bushy Park run #250 250 72%
Joe Nolan n/a 234
Ian Cunningham 23:57 Bushy Park 211 63%
Caroline Cockram 32:40 Crissy Field 38th of 41 finishers 195 49%
Steve Newell n/a 191
John Coffey 25:35 Woking 182 72%
Roderick Hoffman 27:38 Barclay Park park #123 172 56%
Alan Friar 25:55 Reading 171 68%
Scott Davison 23:05 Bedfont Lakes 128 61%
Neil Frediani 24:24 Bedfont Lakes 125 62%
David Duggan 42:20 Bedfont Lakes plus volunteering 115 36%
Piers Keenleyside volunteer Gunnersbury 112
Tony Hird 27:23 Barclay Park park #2, BA Park #196 109 54%
Richard Ruffell 21:28 Luton Wardown club course record, park #46 89 11%
Eddie Giles 25:39 Upton Court 61 66%
Sreeram Sethuraman 46:37 Upton Court volunteer tailender 58 28%
Julie Barclay 23:31 Frimley Lodge first run at Frimley 49 73%
Natalie Ruffell 21:40 Fulham Palace 36 68%
Barry Walters 20:50 Newcastle BA park #195 36 76%
Alice Banks 26:44 Maidenhead 35 71%
Janet Smith 35:46 Peterborough 2nd visit 35 47%
Kevin Holland 27:57 Woking parkrun pb 23 61%
John Scaife 25:02 Maidenhead 23 65%
James Glover 23:29 Guildford parkrun pb 14 63%
Alastair Heslop volunteer Guildford 1

Even with parkrun regulars Steve Newell, Joe Nolan and Alan Anderson not running this week we still had over 20 members turning out somewhere or other round the country (and again at Crissy Field in San Francisco).

The best performance was by Barry Walters (20:50, 76.32%) who added a new parkrun to his list and the BA Club list too at Exhibition Park in Newcastle.

By his own admission Jonathan Cox has been a "below the radar" member for a couple of years now but he raised his head long enough to tell us that he was about to run his 250th parkrun which he promptly did last Saturday at Bushy Park to become the third member of the club to reach that milestone. Jonathan hasn't been reported on to date since in the parkrun database he is registered (correctly) with his first claim club - Stragglers.  Other members in that situation are welcome to tell me of their parkrun A-number so that I can include them in the weekly report.  

Going the other way I understand Tony Hird has asked to be put on the transfer list and his first run at Barclay Park (along with Roderick Hoffman) may be his last while associated with us - but we shall see.  Websites can remain static in many strange ways. Barclay is another new park for the club - at 196 we are edging closer to 200.

A couple of parkruns pbs to report this week - James Glover (23:29) at Guildford and Kevin Holland 27:57 at Woking.

Updated club parkrun stats: www.barunner.org.uk/results/ba_parkrun_park_totals.xls 

Steve Newell (mainly)

BAAC Annual General Meeting - write-up

You've seen the show, now here's your opportunity to read the book.  It's just as exciting as the live event, filled with all the thrills and spills of activities at the club over the past year!  If you want to nominate it for the Man Booker prize, it has to be better than The Life of Pi.......

BAAC AGM 2015

Steve Hillier

Meet the Committee

Most club members rarely if ever make it to the Heston Venue and so only get the chance to meet up with committee members at events.  A good suggestion has been made for each of the committee members to write a few words about themselves.  Thank you to Clara for being first off the mark...

Clara Halket - Ladies Captain

Clara Halket photograph

I started running in my late teens and became a road runner associated with Singapore Amateur Athletics Association. Some years later I switched sport to karate, got into the national team and competed internationally and accumulated some medals and trophies. I continued running to maintain stamina. When I moved to the UK in my late 20s, I discovered the beautiful trails and started to run more on the trails than road and loving it. Now in my 50s, my pace is slower and I enjoy plodding the longer distances. I can't remember when I joined the running club, but I do remember that the then ladies captain, Helen Smith, arranged to meet up with me and introduced me to some of the other lady runners. She also introduced me to the cross country events which I thoroughly enjoyed. Despite the sometimes harsh weather conditions, the cross country runs were great fun.

Helen handed over the captain baton to me some years ago. She is a hard act to follow and even now, after 4 years as ladies captain, I still look to Helen for advice and support in managing the cross country league matches and the Ladies Speedbird 5K event that we host every year at the Harmondsworth parklands. Apart from assisting with club events whenever I can, my current aim is to encourage more lady runners from across the BA business to join us.

Clara

Ed: Clara is cabin crew and usually passes on one or two contacts for the distribution list from each work trip taken.  It can be difficult to say no to a 3rd Dan black belter in Shitoryu Karate!

Frieth Hilly Sunday 18th October

Five weeks to go until the Frieth Hilly! Please come and run with us again as we'd love to see you there. You can enter online at the website www.friethhilly.co.uk .

The 10k winds along woodland paths, through a grassy meadow, plunges down a thrilling hill, skirts the bottom of the valley then winds up again to Parmoor in a heart-thumping but exhilarating climb.

The 5k is equally scenic, but less hilly! Don't forget 11 year olds and over are welcome to enter the 5k, it's a great, fun intro to cross country racing.

There's a creche for your little (and not so little) ones where they'll be royally entertained by qualified childcare professionals while you run. (Book in advance via the website)

Why not bring along your family as the BBQ will be dishing up steaming hot bacon and sausage sarnies (plus veggie options) in their gazebo.
Frieth's bake-off enthusiasts will have spent the weekend making their delicious home-made cakes and biscuits for sale in the village hall and Dave the Disco is back! Imagine Ibiza in a rural school playground where most of the ravers are under 10 (or over 40) and you've an 'interesting' image to greet you on your return!

It's a lovely way to celebrate awesome autumn and our glorious Hambleden valley. Its on Sunday 18th October, at 10am and starts from Frieth School (4 miles from Marlow). Come run with us. Please enter online at www.friethhilly.co.uk

Roderick - please let me know if you take up this challenge, the event hires the BAAC clock and it would save effort if someone could return the clock from the day. roderick.hoffman@ba.com

News for the next BAAC News Digest?

Please send items for inclusion in the next Digest.  Results, news, pictures, feedback, jokes, stories - send it to us at news@barunner.org.uk.

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www.barunner.org.uk.

 

      

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