baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club
BA Athletics Club News Digest 6th July 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. The previous law has been replaced with a new law and the new law now allows groups up to 30 in size. However the guidance we are operating under has not yet been updated to reflect the new law. Therefore for this week we should continue to work with the maximum group size of six and the social distancing gap of an unwieldy 2metres. If England Athletics update their guidance this will be communicated initially through Facebook. We have returned to some side-by-side training and events in July, "Shared" events, see below. Midweek Challenge - Virtual Race and Shared 5k Runs #Date – 8th July / Time – 6pm / Course – a 5k course near you or join others at Northala Fields or elsewhere This is a virtual race and most runners should be prepared to start at 6pm on the 8th July and use the WhatsApp group to communicate your finish BUT exceptions will be allowed - contact Steve Taylor and tell him what time you can do it. You will need to plan a 5k route near to where you live. The route needs to be as close to 5k as you can make it so use a GPS watch or route mapping website to create your 5k route and be familiar with your route and where the start and finish point is. Or use your GPS watch as you run so that you know when you have covered 5k. Send Steve Taylor the following details by 9pm Tuesday 7th July:
For the 6pm runners Steve will create a WhatsApp group of all the runners specifically for this race and the start of the race will be announced on this group. You will be given a runner number by Steve to use in the WhatsApp group. Remember your runner number, you will need it to announce when you finish the race, there won’t be any bibs. On race day the start will be announced with a GO message at exactly 6pm. There will be countdown messages from an hour leading up to the start so that you’re prepared and can check that you’re receiving messages. Start running as soon as the GO message is received and not before. Once you have finished your 5k run, message the WhatsApp group with just your runner number, e.g. "22" (no times, no pictures, just your number). The order that the runner numbers appear in the group will be the provisional finish order of the race so once you have completed your distance and stopped your watch you need to grab your phone and message your number as quickly as possible. After all runners have finished the race Steve will message that the race is ended and runners can then message him with their number and finish time for him to crosscheck with and include in the results, e.g. "Runner 22 – Time 25:45 - at Bedfont Lakes". Don’t message your time until the race is ended to avoid any congestion on the messaging group. Steve will merge the times with times from any key workers and message back the full results. Those running at other agreed times should submit their times to Steve using email or other means. The winner and/or gender age group winners will receive top bragging rights and a place in the BAAC digest. Since this event is the Club In-house Event for July all participants will get a club round-the-block point. The WhatsApp group will be deleted within two weeks of the end of the race. Steve Taylor (soloruns@barunner.org.uk) Shared Run Options for this eventRoderick is organising a shared run at Northala Fields (meet where the parkrun does by 17:50). This will have a simpler course to the parkrun and avoid the more popular paths in the park. Currently up to five participants can join in BUT each must be pre-booked to enable the filling in of the risk-assessment form. To pre-book contact Roderick. You will also need to advise Steve of your entry into the race. Anyone else can organise a similar shared run, for instance at Bedfont Lakes. The organiser is recommended to action the Club Risk Assessment form which is available here. Midweek Challenges - RespellingFirstly last week I forgot to thank Amanda Coombs for the Pub Cricket run, so thank you (and to other-half Mike). Next week Street Spelling returns as the midweek challenge. This time it will have a slightly looser format. On Monday I will post a large number of eight letter words. Each word will consist of eight different letters, including letters across the whole alphabet. Each word will be worth a number of points depending on the scarcity of the letters as the start letter of street names. So for example a "B" will be worth one point but a "Q" will be worth ten points. You can choose which word to take on, and when to do your run, up until the end of Friday. The points you achieve will be deducted as minutes from your time. So if you took 24 minutes to complete a word worth 27 points you would score -3. The lowest score (highest negative) wins! (and again there will also be a shortest distance winner). Whilst you can do this on any day and at any time it might be more fun to agree to do it at the same time as anyone living near you - and see if you see them on the way around! Roderick Hoffman Solo and Shared Mile Run Results for July
19 participants in this month's Mile event. Five of us ran together on Harmondsworth Moor and two at Crane Park. Had everyone run together there would have been some tight finishes - with Michael, Amanda and Scott all recording the same time 07:41! Looking at our performances over the four months we have been doing these solo (and now shared) miles there have been clear improvements (I hope it isn't that the courses have been getting shorter, or the tail winds stronger!) Both Stephen Taylor and Bob Bannister have improved every month of four, and Neil, Michael and Mike for the three that they have done. But then you have to admire Harjit and Simon for consistency! There will be another mile next month, focused on Thursday 6th August, and hopefully more of us will be running together.
July Run-of-the-Month - reminder England Athletics Virtual 5k Road Running Championships (11-13 July) #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 3rd to 6th July 2020This week only 21 colleagues recorded weekend activity achievements - perhaps others were queuing to get into their local pubs. But between us we did run and walk 250km, not quite our record but not far off (on 9th May, 33 of us covered 264km).
Jain included an interested walk on the river bed at Chiswick Eyot including the photo included here. Ben Cooper is a new member and added the BA Maintenance Base at Cardiff to the locations run at. I've also been noticing that Andy Rayner usually sends me two times each week for his XC course and the midweek time is almost always better than the weekend time. Since this is the weekend achievement table I feel obliged to post the slower time of the two! Next weekend we have the England Athletics Virtual 5k as the Run of the Month (see above). But for those not doing that 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 UpdateThis weekend took me back to my youth before the national lottery or even premium bonds when in the summer months with no football was being played in UK people used to spend their hard earned wages gambling on the outcome of Australian football matches. A typical perm of any 8 from 10 matches (45 pennies) cost about the same as three pints of beer and the post office took commission on the postal orders for both stakes and winnings. In the winter months a winning line containing the only eight drawn games on a Saturday afternoon would win a jackpot prize of £75,000. Workplace syndicates were common with stake money being collected on a Thursday afternoon. parkrun resumed in New Zealand this Saturday with 29 of 30 parkruns operating. Attendances were generally lower than on 14th March but there were exceptions and it is worth bearing in mind that it is now mid-winter in New Zealand. Whanganui Riverside parkrun was able to finally hold the inaugural run originally pencilled in for 4th April. parkruns in New Zealand typically operate with about a dozen volunteers and numbers held up well.
Steve Newell Ed: Currently you are unlikely to be allowed into New Zealand and if you are you will be subject to a strict two-week quarantine. But on your return to the UK you won't be expected to quarantine again (provided you came straight back). Celebratory Shared Runs - Wednesday July 29thI will be organising a shared run to celebrate my 60th birthday later this month. This will be held on Wednesday July 29th, the exact format is yet to be decided although the venue is likely to be on Harmondsworth Moor, with the option of a Harmondsworth Pub visit afterwards. Neil Frediani leaves BA that week and will also be participating in a shared run. This could either be the same run or, if numbers are too high for the current legislation, could be a totally separate arrangement, but set-up so that we can wave at each other! Please let one or each of us know that you could be up for this. Roderick Hoffman / Neil Fredianii Ultra-Scotland Marathon...in Surrey, Saturday 4th July
Thank You
60 Post Boxes Achievement
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 replaced (3rd July 2020) and now says that people can meet in groups of up to 30. However England Athletics has not yet updated their guidance hence our advise remains largely as it was (but should shortly change):
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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No
one reported an achievement this week of cycling. Last week it had looked like
we'd have to have an interesting discussion about cycling at our next running
club committee meeting.
I
had entered the Marathon under the Ultra Scotland banner. As the name implies,
the event is normally held in Scotland, however with lockdown cancelling most
races all over the country, this year it had gone virtual. 
I
am writing to you with a very special thank you and your team for the
amazing effort you've put in to become an exceptional Stay at Home Hero
for White Lodge.
My
weekend achievement was a long walk. My objective wasn't a specific
mileage, I simply wanted to register "60" of something to celebrate my
birthday later this month and decided that "post boxes" would provide a
suitable memento for this year. The image shows that I was successful,
indeed I also visited an extra box incase one of the photos failed. My
mileage for the day was 24.5 and the activity duration was 8.5 hours so
that means that I achieved just under 2.5 post boxes per mile and just
over 7 post boxes per hour. In truth I could have done it more
efficiently but had wanted to take in some other locations upon the way.