baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club

BA Athletics Club News Digest 27th 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 the end of July, but the club continues to operate with Solo and Shared runs as listed above - for restrictions and advice see the Coronavirus footnote at the end of this digest.  For the shared activities we need to continue to work with the social distancing gap of 2metres (see next section). Following England Athletics guidance enables us to operate activities with 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

This Week's Midweek Challenge - A Club Time Trial on Harmondsworth Moor from 18:00 on Wednesday 29th July

This week's run will be a pilot of a Time Trial format that we could use for the Speedbird Ladies event if we decide to go ahead with that before the end of August. Wednesday's event will follow the Covid-19 guidelines of England Athletics/Run Britain as permitted by the law and government guidance.

In particular ALL participants (including spectators) must be registered in advance and must be sent an electronic briefing to avoid the need for a pre-event briefing in the field. Therefore if you are interested in this event you must tell me so by 18:30 on Tuesday. I'm currently expecting 19 of us with initials AC, BS, CK, CM, DD, DF, GR, GT, JS, MD, MJ, NF, RH, SD, STu, STy, SH, SN, TM.

The electronic briefing contains full details of the event but in short runners will be set off at 15 second intervals on a 4.3km single loop course. Overtaking is allowed (though running side-by-side isn't). The course will be well marked. There are no facilities at the carpark or start/finish area.

Some of us will meet afterwards at the Five Bells in Harmondsworth, including to celebrate Neil Frediani's last week as a BA employee and my 60th birthday. It is forecast to be a nice evening so we'll probably be in the garden. The pub has a hand cleaning station at the entrance and may insist on the collection of contact details for Test and Trace. The pub is not currently serving food other than pub snacks but they don't mind us bringing our own. I've already bought some Jaffa Cakes! 

Roderick Hoffman Tell us to expect you please

Midweek Challenge - Track on Field Results

The first graph suggest that a 130m race would have been interesting - with five of us recording the same speed (extrapolated that is, between 200m and 100m speeds): Emma and SteveH slowing down, Me and Denis speeding up and SteveT staying at the same pace.

The second graph shows that Bob continues to improve - and the improvement each month is accelerating! Barry is getting better, Michael is going the wrong way and the rest of us have our ups and downs.

Stephen Taylor has discovered why I, having run at Spikes Bridge in April and May, have now switched to Feltham.

Roderick Hoffman

"Ross Barkley 5k" Results

So, five of us gave the Ross Barkley a go, with mixed results. I was going to suggest this as an option for the week each month we have a Track-on-Field scheduled but perhaps everyone should do this as a one-off challenge one week?  I found that having done my Ross Barkley last week I was better prepared for the shorter Track-on-Field.

Roderick Hoffman

SOLO Activity Achievement Weekend 24th to 27th July 2020

This week 23 colleagues recorded weekend activity achievements.

Gyms get a few mentions this week, but not so indoor swimming pools (and softplay centres remain closed also).

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

New Zealand parkrun continued with 29 venues open after last week's floods receded.  Attendances were up slightly week on week but were still down overall by around 25% against pre-lockdown figures.  But it is still winter there.  The 3,347 runners included 164 first timers and it was good news too for the milestone T-shirt factory workers.  Time to crank up the looms to produce 9 red "50", 2 black "100" and an olive green "250".

Yorkshire girl Hannah Oldroyd (18:03, 82.36%) is making the most of her life in New Zealand.  This week she was the fastest finisher at Blenheim parkrun on the South Island where she already holds the female course record with 17:36.  She has been first female in all of her last ten parkrun appearances and first overall in five of those.

Steve Newell

Quiz Results

Linda's latest quiz doesn't seem to have got us stumped in the same way that the previous Colour's quiz did. On Facebook all of the questions were quickly flagged as answered and a couple of people emailed in full solutions. Looks like we've been spending the lockdown dreaming of shopping. All of the answers are in the link below but here are the answers to some of the questions that fewer people had answers to...

• 02: Tries to get favours with copper on this planet? (6,2,5) - Answer: Currys PC World
• 14: Sterling getting good exchange rate (14) - Answer: Poundstretcher
• 31: Young lady comes out with headless chicken and pork joints (9) - Answer: Debenhams (Deb, 'en, hams)
• 04: Hang around with a flower (8) - Answer: Waitrose
• 05: High moral standards, Or scientific rules (10) - Answer: Principles
• And I'm the only person who didn't know that there is a shop on the High Street called FatFace. Will it be covered by Boris's clampdown on unhealthy foods?

Shop Around Quiz Answers

Lottery Win!

To what extent this will help, or hinder, our plans to run in Cranford Park, often the location of our own cross-country events, is not yet known. But if nothing else then at least they will have a toilet block!

Coronavirus Warning Footnote [changes from last week underlined or struck-through]

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 says that people can meet in groups of up to 30:

• Do not exercise outside the house 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, or if you consider yourself 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. Advice is still to avoid public transport and shared car journeys,
• In England you may meet with up to five other persons for your exercise outside the home, and in some situations up to 30. Club organised events can include more. 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 exercise, 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, or to meet with fewer people, 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.

Not for you, no longer interested? remove me please.

Difficulty viewing this? Read it from the website:- http://www.barunner.org.uk/News Latest.shtml.Club website: www.barunner.org.uk.