baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club
BA Athletics Club News Digest 7th February 2022
Events marked "#" are points scoring for the club's participation trophy - for the 2022 title. Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps] For future weeks: inclusions, with photos, please to Roderick Hoffman at news@barunner.org.uk. One of you pointed out that in last week's digest I had said that the awards would be held on 23rd February - that was an error, the 23rd March date is correct, as in the diary above. This Week's EventsPlease help me by sending in your results, for instance by filling in the tables below and forwarding to News@barunner.org.uk. Some events will have "Prompts" set up in Facebook. These allow the posting of a single image and some text and make it easy to flip through everyone's entries. Monthly Mile (submit before Monday 14th February):Run one mile and send me your time or add the details to the Facebook prompt. The mile can somebody else's formal event or even one mile within a longer run. I'll then produce a fancy graph showing your time this month compared to those of other people and previous runs over the last year.
Weekly Athletic Achievement (by late Sunday) or use the Facebook group prompt:
Club Featured parkrun - Saturday 12th February Southall parkrunSouthall parkrun reaches its 6th run on Saturday. It is my nearest parkrun and I'll be running it for the first time and I hope that some of you will be able to join me there. Only Barry and Melanie have run at it so far so for the rest of us it will be a new parkrun. And Barry and Melanie are welcome to see if they can get a PB! [but sorry Melanie, "6" is neither a Prime Number, nor a member of the Fibonacci series and you already have a "South" for your Compass, although on the other hand you are yet to run at a "6" so this event could help you with your Wilson Index - and apologies to everyone else for losing you for a moment]. See course | Southall parkrun for course and location details. Southall mainline station is nearby and the park is well served by buses. Parking is possible in the vicinity but you are advised to get there early - there are usually some spaces in Green Drive on the eastern side of the park, or if arriving later try Dormer's Wells Ln alongside the golf course. There are no toilets or other facilities in the park. If enough of us are there early we'll take a club photograph before the start, otherwise, and perhaps additionally, we'll take one at the finish. Early indications are that the weather will be cold but dry. Although the parkrun site doesn't recommend a post run café we could perhaps explore the options in Southall - for example an "ABC café" is under 400m from the finish. Roderick Hoffman Wednesday 26th January Five Mile Handicap - league tableThe league table has now been updated and Roderick Hoffman currently has a good lead from Julie Barclay and with the Scaifes and Steve Hillier not far behind. The series is judged on the best four results from the six runs and at the moment Roderick is the only participant who has completed four runs - hence there is plenty of scope for others to catch up. The final two events are on the 23rd February and the 30th March. Roderick Hoffman / Steve Newell Tom Rowley Cross Country, Sunday 20th March, 1030Each year British Airways AC stages a cross country in the flat, sometimes muddy, Cranford Park, close to Heathrow. An important part of the race has always been Tom Rowley: Always first in the park to mark the course, then cheering the runners, before setting off to collect in his arrows. If you were lucky, you would get a polo mint or a joke from Tom. In 2022, we are naming the race in his honour, and we would like to encourage a good BAAC turnout. Woking AC and Milocarians AC have also been invited to take part. There will be no fee to enter, but no medals or trophies to win other than the first BAAC male and female finishers will share the club's Cross Country trophy for 2022 (to be presented in 2023). The course includes open grassland and a wooded section, and will be well marked and marshalled. Each lap is just over 1.5 miles. Ladies will be invited to run two laps, men three laps. As well as runners, we will also need marshals. If you would like to take part or help with the marshalling, please let me know at stevehillier@msn.com Steve Hillier Concorde 1hr Race (5th June) and Club Test Event (13th April)
We need to familiarize ourselves with the course and facilities. For that reason we have also hired the circuit for Wednesday 13th April from 17:30. As well as checking out the facilities we'll do a practice one hour event - so come prepared to run (or walk) for the duration and a little bit more. The club doesn't have existing records for the 1hr event so these will be set on the night - including within each age category. And we'll probably go to a local pub afterwards. Please put these two dates in your diaries now. Roderick Hoffman Recent Activity AchievementsI picked up on 17 club members and friends reporting recent activity achievements.
I tried to edit Jacqui's photo to show the slope on the hill but failed - the trees at the top are 40m above where the photograph is taken from, and neither marks the top or bottom of the course. My photo? Since pictures of postboxes are boring this is another parkrun course I walked last week. Last week's photo was of Tring (former) parkrun course. The clue to this week's is that it is known as a place to store produce before or after rail transshipments. Nothing from Denis and Joan this weekend - but that is because they sacrificed their normal weekend run in order to be volunteers at the inaugural Pinner Village Junior parkrun on Sunday. They hope to be able to have a regular Ruislip Woods run midweek for a period from now on. Roderick Hoffman parkrun Results for Saturday 5th February 202240 activities are recorded this week. Please get in touch if your activity is missing.
As the table above suggests as many members as ever were out and about at parkruns far and wide this weekend. Touristic tendencies were clearly in evidence and running consecutive weeks at your home run is now becoming increasingly unusual. Earlier in the week news came through of a new member, David Cowell, joining us in the January transfer window. Last week he was at Monsal Trail parkrun in Derbyshire (formerly known as Bakewell) finishing in 19:33. It has been noted that before joining the club Mike Dennison also ran there in 19:35. So the future could be interesting. David is well travelled and we can look forward to a geography lesson. John and Benita Scaife (32:24) got the ball rolling at Casula parklands in New South Wales (West of Sydney). Their 18th runs at different parks in Australia and their first runs in Australia for well over four years. More ground breaking runs followed in UK as Roderick Hoffman (31:05) ran in the 200th edition at Wotton in Gloucestershire where the core team’s wish to have a bumper number of runners was rewarded with an attendance of 267 against an average of 84. It has to be admitted that there were 304 at the inaugural in 2016 but even 100 is unusual. Not far away and also in Gloucestershire, David Duggan (32:41) was at Mallards Pike in Lydney (there is also a “Lydney” parkrun about 4 miles away) where 100 is a typical attendance. David is closing in on his 100 parks – he is now on 97. Finally, Melanie Miller (36:56) appeared at Central Park in Plymouth taking her to 56 parks and the club to 623. This coming Saturday (12th February) we’ll be having a club featured parkrun at Southall Park close to where the gasholder used to have “LH” painted on it to guide BOAC pilots into Heathrow. Another gasholder in Northolt was labelled “NO” for BEA pilots heading for Northolt. The story was that a Pan Am Boeing 707 once landed at Northolt in error and had one hell of a job taking off from the shorter runway. See Ruislip Online | Pan American Boing 707 lands at RAF Northolt for the story and photographs. Both gasholders are now demolished but aircraft have alternative, and more reliable, navigational tools available to them. Runners coming to Southall should be aware that there is no official carpark - see above for parking advice. Just allow a little extra time to walk from wherever you find and be aware that the whole area seems to a 20 MPH zone so no place to be in a hurry. Sadly no toilets in the park either. It is the newest parkrun in London taking the total to 59 – only 32 parkrunners have so far logged a run at all 59 although both Roderick Hoffman and Steve Newell should add to that number on Saturday. Steve Newell Petra reported that her jog was slower than the previous week's walk and we also had Jeremy Short reporting his first parkrun for a while as a walk since he is not able to run following recent operations and procedures. He tells me that it was "generally enjoyable although it was a strange feeling not being able to run it". I'm fully supportive of walking at parkrun - as you would expect from the person who reminds you that they hold the club's men's 2k walking record. Also when I missed a parkrun one weekend due to having a surgeon drilling holes through my skull, I was able to walk round the parkrun the following Saturday. I've also got a brother-in-law who finished his twentieth parkrun on Saturday without having run a single one - and the only reason my sister finished ahead of him is because of, in her words, "a sneaky finishing line sprint". Everyone can be a winner at parkrun and I would welcome some of our other club members joining us all in a walk some Saturday mornings. There were four new parkruns in the UK last Saturday. Trentham Gardens must have had some local promotion because they had a massive 557 runners - including half of the attendees from nearby Hanley and The Wammy parkruns. Nearer to home Oxford has a new parkrun "University Parks" with 305 attendees. Oxford parkrun (run in Cutteslowe and Sunnymead Park) looks increasingly in need of a rename since it is now the joint third nearest parkrun to Oxford. Full club parkrun database - {read access to club parkrun database} - Download and explore (this is where I get most of my club stats from). Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps] Roderick Hoffman 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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On
Sunday 5th of June there will be the inaugural run of the club's new Concorde
event - the Concorde One Hour Race. This will be held at the Hillingdon Cycle
Circuit, Springfield Road, Hayes, UB4 0LP. Participants will see what distance
they can cover by running or walking laps of the circuit. The world record is
held by Mo Farah at 21.33km and Sifan Hassan holds the ladies record at 18.93km.
We would hope that participants get close to 15km although some may decide to
just walk round and cover nearer 5km. All participants running at 7mins per km
or faster should be able to complete 10km in the hour and we will arrange the
event so that we can also give them a 10km time. We will also hold a kid's
1k or 2k race at 09:15 for children of participants. This event is being run
with chip timing and other costs include the exclusive hire of the venue (with
changing rooms and toilets) and a medal - the draft image of which is featured
here. The event will be promoted through Active Training World (ATW) and won't
be cheap so we will appreciate all club members doing their best to promote the
event from when it opens for registration in early March. I will provide
material to pass on but in the meantime, those of you who are members of other
running clubs might like to enquire what their club 1hr records are.