40 Years

40 Years Strong - The British Airways Athletics Club

The British Airways Athletics Club was founded in April 1981 and therefore is 40 years strong this month!   Allan Hardy wrote an article in issue 58 (February 2001) of Round-the-Block from which I've sourced some information in this issue of the digest.

I don't have a list of the club's founder members but current members who were active at the formation date include Harry Wild, David Barnard, Alan Friar, John Williams and youngster Barry Walters. The club was founded around keen runners many of whom were already members of their local running clubs. That was why traditionally the BAAC's activities have been done on Wednesday and Monday evenings, local clubs traditionally meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Perhaps the first race entered after the club's formation was the Battersea Park 5 with finishers including Barry Walters (2nd overall in 25:21, on a slightly long five mile course) and Harry Wild (31:06). Checking below it is good to see that Barry is still doing about the same time for 5', though he has gone metric over the years.

The club will organise an event to celebrate our 40th anniversary.  This will be when we can hold the event with unconstrained numbers, under a roof and with a bar! Expect this to be sometime in the autumn.

1 John Williams

"40 years ago this month.  It’s hard to believe. Half my life, give or take a day or two.  The memories remain vivid .... London Marathons, Hood to Coasts, WARRs, to name but a few.  Memories too of fellow club members through the years, all good friends and serious competitors.  And memories too of the hard work put in by Committee members and volunteers.  Those 40 years would not have been the same without ‘the Club’.

Best wishes"

John W. (Club President)

5 Chairs

Organisationally Allan Hardy was significant in the early days of the club but the club's first chairman was Dave Blackett. Within a few years Brian Forrester stepped into the role of Chairman and held it for most of the first thirty years of the club. He didn't hold it continuously - Chris Stockwell had one year in charge and John Williams was elected five times and served four (but that is another story).

I had little club organisational involvement prior to my WARR 2010 role, I'd never been on the committee.  But in 2011, after taking a year off to recharge my batteries, I took on the role of Communications and Deputy Chairman. Due to Brian's declining health I took over from him from 2016 and have held the role of Chairman since.

Roderick Hoffman

82 Round-the-Blocks from 9 Editors

I will specifically cover how club communication has changed over the forty years of the club.

In the early days it was important who you knew as details of club events would be passed on by word of mouth, or by notices stuck on a noticeboard of a club house miles from where anyone actually lived or worked. Anyone who wasn't close to a committee member didn't have much chance of keeping up with the club. Allan Hardy produced a few newsletters and Dave Barnard started producing the "Green Peril" which was a list of future events and key results.  These were distributed by the BA offices postal service.

The club needed a regular newsletter and so in July 1983 Mike Barnett produced the first "Round-the-Block" newsletter. Named after the ten mile run we (all!) often did on a Wednesday evening and pictured on the cover [see photo below]. Mike only produced the first issue with George Tychowski editing issues 2 through 7. In April 1987 John Williams edited issue number 8 and John continued editing for 35 issues until issue number 42 in February 1996. Then Nick Edge took over and produced 8 issues. Steve Hillier produced one issue followed by Sue Wells with six, including a massive multi-coloured issue to mark the Millennium. Judy Connaghton (now Turton) produced five issues in 2001 and 2002, and then Paul Goldsmith took over for at least 14 issues before handing over to Natalie Lang for up to 6 issues, the last being issue 82 in November 2011. I'm not quite sure when Paul handed over to Natalie because I don't have copies of those - they were distributed electronically.

Overall there were 82 Round-the-Block issues over 30 years so the original plan of having these quarterly had obviously faltered. There was a general problem that issues required a great deal of work to produce, get printed and distribute (including by external post to retired members) so the work got put off which was counterproductive because there was then more content to be included in each issue. I've got paper copies of about 57 of the 82 and I'm currently producing an index into them. Once I've completed those I've got, I'll be going in search of the gaps.

We have had a website from sometime in the '00s. Initially set-up and maintained by Paul Knechtl. Having delivered a website for the WARR 2010 event I then produced the baRUNNER site from October 2011. Prior to that Paul Brandon had been manually forwarding all club related emails to all members but with over a dozen of these each week we had to produce a more sustainable process.  Initially this consisted of each "email" being posted in a list on baRUNNER but from August 2012 I started producing the weekly Digest - available online but also emailed to all club members. Nearly nine years on, so about 450 issues later, that remains the current process. Facebook is used, and increasingly so, but it is still as a back-up process to the digest.

So, whereas in the early days it was who you knew that determined whether you knew what the club was planning, now it is how well you are connected - and I do acknowledge that we will have lost several members because they are not connected to the Internet or email services. We will make efforts to reconnect for our 40th anniversary celebration.
Roderick Hoffman