baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club
BA Athletics Club News Digest 29th June 2020Events - 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. There are no positive changes to this this week - the maximum group size is still six and the social distancing gap is still an unwieldy 2metres and no change to this is expected. For instance England Athletics have not issued guidance on how runners could take advantage of the "1m+" announcement. Ed: The law is looking increasingly draconian in relation to outside exercise, not a frequent source of virus spread, but it is the law and breaking it would invalidate our insurance and could result in fixed penalties - which individuals would have to pay, it would not be covered by club funds. We will return to some side-by-side training and events in July, "Shared" events, see below. Solo and Shared Mile runsThis Week's Midweek Challenge will be the Solo Mile for July (which can be run from 30th June). A novel feature of next week's run is that it will feature a shared run (subject to restrictions). The shared run will be on Thursday 2nd July at 12:45 on the mile course on Harmondsworth Moor (so exactly replacing Ian's cancelled monthly mile run). This WILL BE a Club organised in-person running event, the first since early March. I will be the event organiser and as such I have a risk assessment form to fill in which includes listing the participants. A maximum of six participants are permitted. I suspect that the event will be undersubscribed, so please consider joining me and let me know that you might - Interested in the mile run {email:News@barunner.org.uk}. If we do get more of us interested than permitted then I'll split us into two groups, with a second event organiser and a different course also on Harmondsworth Moor. Hopefully enough individuals will volunteer for the shared run to validate our processes for such events. This will enable us to propose and organise further events including both training and internal races. If you are unable to join us on Harmondsworth Moor then you are welcome to run a solo mile elsewhere at any time on Tuesday through Friday. The mile could be measured by GPS on your watch, or by your phone, and ideally should be a straight or circular route rather than an out and back (due to recording issues at the turnaround point). Run on tarmac unless you'd prefer a different surface, or live close enough to an underused track. Please submit your result to me by the end of Friday.
Pub Cricket Midweek Challenge (by Mike and Amanda Coombs) - Results and ReportEighteen entries into the Pub Cricket midweek challenge - excellent considering the heatwave! A total of 285 pubs ‘visited’ and not a drop drunk, unless we include the gallons of water on returning home!
Careful route planning was required to maximise pubs and runs in the available time and, of course in a challenge such as this, the playing field is never level. Good scores started to come in early on Tuesday morning, and I was pleased that I hadn’t won my own challenge. (In retrospect that was never a danger.) Later that day Janet Smith completed a walk from Datchet to Windsor to score 38 runs!! Surely this was unbeatable? How wrong could I be. The following day Mike Dennison came in with a magnificent 52 points, closely followed by Steve Taylor with 51 (after losing a point and later gaining a different one after some lively Facebook discussion which didn’t even involve him!) Unknown to the Facebook users, Steve Newell had submitted an entry by email for 53 points. I had to break the news to him that his Carpenters Arms was not worth 6 points, but only 1, because it referred to the ‘coat of arms’ of carpenters. The judges applied this controversial rule throughout the challenge and a good few points were lost to it. Entries continued to come in, but none looked like threatening Mike’s top spot. Until Friday afternoon that is, when Jain Reid returned from her walk around Chiswick and Hammersmith with a massive 83 points!! Well done Jain – our winner. A lot of work went into planning that route and taking many photographs. We are awarding the wooden spoon to Roderick Hoffman for his 15 runs. (He later ran an unofficial route that he could have taken 20-or-so years ago - before the demise of many local pubs - ten ex-pubs achieving 24 points ALL nearer than the nearest of the six from his scoring run.) The final accolade goes to Simon Turton for the highest average runs per pub at 3.75. Only 8 pubs, but 30 points. Efficient! Scott Davison was next with 3.0.
When my husband Mike and I set the challenge we knew it would be difficult to define a ‘drinking establishment’ and it certainly was, but we hope all that took part enjoyed it. We certainly did. A quote from Jain: “BAAC pub cricket – happy memories of playing this in the car as kids”. July Run-of-the-Month - confirmed as England Athletics Virtual 5k Road Running Championships (11-13 July) #I had no other suggestions so I'm confirming the following as our club external run-of-the-month for July, as a virtual event. This is FREE to enter for anyone who has affiliated to England Athletics either via our club or another (minimum age 16). If your affiliation is via another club you should officially run with that "first claim" club so PLEASE tell me that you have entered so that I can look up your result after the run. Please contact the membership secretary (Alan) to check or change your EA affiliation for this year (it costs £15). The instructions for the event say "open exclusively to runners registered with England Athletics" but it looks like it is possible to enter and select the BA Club (use the code "BAW") even if you are not affiliated. However, if you regularly do well in age classification results, please initiate joining England Athletics before the run! If you don't want to fill in the online entry form then I should be able to do the entry for you - I will need your first name, last name, nationality (if not UK), gender and date of birth.
Extract from the event details page:
SOLO activity achievement weekend 26th to 29th June 2020This week only 24 colleagues recorded weekend activity achievements - a couple of regulars either took the weekend off or failed to inform me of their achievements. The compilation of this table does involve quite a bit of searching through Facebook so if I've missed your achievement consider whether you've provided it to me in an easily "digestible" format.
Amanda's Open water swim was a virtual event - the open water swim was real but it wasn't at Henley, with the bilk competition and was at a sensible hour of the day. Amanda reports "Weekend activity. Another open water swim, but this time with a purpose. I have always fancied doing the Henley Classic swim, which takes place on the Sunday before the Regatta. But it starts at 5am, you have to register 90 minutes before.... working back it all starts to get a bit silly. This year it went virtual. 2.1km in my local lake. The attended event is upstream, so I got off lightly!" Mike's incident packed run included losing his wallet on the way round. Fortunately the person who found it used the enclosed parkrun barcode ICE to contact Mike so that he could collect it and its contents. The time I lost my wallet on a run it was handed into a police station - all of the UK cash and the (already cancelled) credit card were missing...but the large quantity of South African Rand was still in the Wallet! Stephen's run took him up Grove Hill, a very steep hill leading up Harrow-on-the-Hill. At the bottom of the hill is a plaque that reports the country's first fatal road accident - on 25th February 1899. The Daimler Wagonette was unable to take the corner at the bottom as its brakes were struggling to control its speed. Again 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 Updateparkrun alphabeteers short of an "I" will find life just a little bit easier
after the resumption as Itchen Valley Country Park started up on 29th February.
This new parkrun is just North of the M27 and probably within earshot of
Southampton Airport when the wind is from the West. Steve Newell Ed: I had an invitation to the test event at Itchen Valley Country Park, but on the day it was too windy for the park to be open. I was unavailable for the rearranged date and the event did launch on 29th February. I have visited the park and can confirm it has a good cafe - though it is currently closed else I would also have been at it last Thursday. 19 of us did the New Year's Day double on 1st January 2020 (plus others who may have run one and volunteered at another). Sadly that will be the last time we will be allowed to run two parkruns in the same day because parkrun HQ has decided that the events were proving too popular and have cancelled future doubles. They have confirmed that they will still allow parkruns to host extra events on New Year's Day. Capital Ring in One Day
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 has been updated (1st June 2020) and now says what you can't do, rather than only allowing you do do a limited number of things. The sections that refer to the activities of the club are "Restrictions on movement" and "Restrictions on gatherings". In short you can't stay overnight anywhere other than at home and you can't meet with more than one other person indoors or more than five other persons outdoors. Taking into account the law and official guidance we advise you as follows:
If you are unwell yourself, especially if you have symptoms of the virus:
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.
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The
concept was simple. Run from home or work for 45 minutes (or walk for 75
minutes) incorporating as many drinking establishments as possible, each one
scoring ‘runs’ according to the number of legs in the name of the drinking
establishment. Zero legs scored a consolatory single run. A name indicating more
than six legs would score the maximum of six - and most of those claimed are
pictured here.
I’ve
always wanted to complete the Capital Ring in one go and this was my 3rd
attempt. I’ve run on sections of this 78 mile round London route many times
over the years. I did about 25 miles of it when the Ealing Eagles tackled the
whole route as a relay in 2014 with one or two of us running sections of 7 to 10
miles. We were a bit short of runners so I ended up running 3 sections over the
day – we finished in 14:08:53.