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BA Athletics Club News Digest 18th March 2013

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Forthcoming Events

Don't forget the following priority club events:

  • Saturday 23rd March - Club Featured parkrun - Bedfont Lakes 9:00
  • Sunday 24th March - Track&Field Championships and Family Fun Day - Eton from 12:00
  • Wednesday 10th April - "Watersplash" 10k followed by social with food - Concorde Centre 18:00

New members and non-members of all fitness levels and abilities are welcome at all of these events.

The full events diary is on the club website at: http://www.barunner.org.uk/Event Diary.shtml. This has been updated to include events up to November.


Forrester Four-way Folly Results

16 runners and 4 marshals braved a cold March evening to take part in a modified 4 way folly, which turned out to be 4.5mile (7.2km). The course was modified because of work being done on the pavement on part of the 'usual' course. The field was split into 2 groups (red and blue) which determined their order of running the course. Everyone headed off down church lane to Paddy's marshalling point, where the blues turned left to do 2 'small' loops and the reds turned right and headed towards TESCO and Harry's marshalling point, when they reached Harry they were turned around and headed for the start line again to then run 2 small loops in the opposite direction to the blues. The blues after completing their 2 small loops headed off to see Harry by TESCO. Despite the cold weather there were 2 runners showing bare legs, and 1 runner discarded a layer when passing the timekeepers, so maybe it wasn't that cold after all. The fact that there were 2 different ways of running the course meant it was difficult to tell who was leading, Gary at the front of the reds or John at the front of the blues, eventually all was revealed as Gary headed for the line in front. Steve H, Steve N, and Helen ran the course together with Steve H out sprinting the other two coming along Church Lane to finish in front.

Gary Rushmer Red 00:28:13
Chris Kelly Red 00:28:37
John Taylor Blue 00:28:54
Mark Taylor Red 00:29:18
Barry Walters Blue 00:30:48
Simon Turton Blue 00:31:16
Eddie Giles Red 00:34:55
Steve Taylor Blue 00:35:14
Dennis Foxley Red 00:35:20
Joe Nolan Red 00:37:01
Alan Friar Red 00:38:35
Alan Anderson Red 00:41:30
Roderick Hoffman Blue 00:42:16
Steve Hillier Blue 00:43:38
Steve Newell Blue 00:44:05
Helen Smith Blue 00:44:15

 Marshals: Harry Wild, Paddy O'Shea, Brian Forrester and Paul Brandon.


'Prizes' were awarded to all afterwards in the Washington room as happy birthday was sung and cakes were cut to celebrate two members reaching a significant birthday earlier this month.

Birthday Cake Photographs

Paul Brandon


52 parkrun Thank Yous

I ran my fifty-second parkrun at my fifty-second different parkrun venue last Saturday at Grovelands in Enfield. An odd achievement but an achievement nevertheless.  On my way to Grovelands I thought of all those who had enabled this and realised that Thank Yous were due:

  • Alan Anderson for finding out about parkrun and passing on the message,
  • The BAAC Committee for deciding to feature occasional parkruns that led to my first at Bedfont Lakes on 25th June 2011 including Ian Cunningham for acting as BA host that day,
  • Steve Newell for providing youthful enthusiasm over the 90 weeks since,
  • My Australian sister Charlotte for enabling me to run the two Melbourne parkruns (and joining me on one of them),
  • My Leicestershire sister Sarah for joining me on seven or eight of the UK parkruns,
  • Honda for selling me a more reliable car (I've had to travel to Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester and Sheffield in the last month to find new parkruns),
  • Samsung and Google for providing a Smartphone Map Navigation system enabling me to find obscure parks on Saturday mornings when I've not really been awake,
  • All the parkrun Run Directors and helpers especially all those with parkruns set-up since I ran my first (about half of the 52 parkruns did not exist when I ran at Bedfont Lakes),
  • All the parkrunners who have kept me company on every run - from the 721 at Bushy to the 11 at Pymmes.

Roderick Hoffman

Club Featured parkrun

This Saturday, 23rd March, the club is returning to Bedfont Lakes parkrun - the nearest parkrun to Heathrow Airport.  As well as Roderick receiving his "50" shirt we can all have a 5k time trial run.  For anyone who hasn't done a parkrun yet - all you need to do in advance is register here http://www.parkrun.org.uk/register/ and print off a barcode and then you are all set to run - and it is all free.

The run start is 09:00, we'll want to take a team photo by 08:50 and if you are travelling by car please allow time for your 800m warm-up jog from the car park in Bedfont Road.  More details on the parkrun website: http://www.parkrun.org.uk/bedfont/course/

Please let me know if you need help getting to the event or back afterwards.

Roderick Hoffman


Ladies Speedbird 5k Announcement

The Ladies Speedbird 5K is taking place on Wednesday 8th May at Harmondsworth Moorlands next to the BA Waterside headquarters. This year the race will be starting at 7.00pm instead of 6.30pm. This follows feedback from participants that some people were unable to get there on time for the 6.30pm start due to traffic.

We hope to see many of our ladies running the race. Please invite your running friends to come along. You can download an entry form from the BAAC website (Entry Form). Forms are also available at the BAAC notice board at the Concorde Club sports centre.

The race will not happen without the generous donation of time from volunteers. We need volunteers to mark up the course and put up direction to the venue earlier in the day, to help with traffic, marshal the course, and record the times and present medals at the finish. In short, we need as many volunteers as possible to make the event a successful one. You'll need to be on site at around 4.30pm if you are helping to mark the course. There will be a general briefing and allocation of marshal points at 6.00pm for all marshals, therefore all volunteers should be on site just before 6.00pm if possible.

If you are able to help or have any questions, please contact Paul (pbrandon@amadeus.com ) or Clara (clarapn@aol.com ). Thank you very much in advance.

Clara Halket


Track&Field in 2013

This year we will be spoilt for choice with Track&Field.  Not only will we have our own Monday night training and ongoing Grand Prix competition but also we have entered two local leagues - the Rosenheim League as last year and also a Veterans League.  Details of these will be published below and in future weeks but before then don't forget...

 

...we'll see you all THIS Sunday at Eton for our own Track & Field Championships and Family Fun Day.  This could be your opportunity to try something different!  Details here.

Eddie Giles


Rosenheim League 2013 Venues and Timetables

WEDNESDAY 1 MAY – KINGSMEADOW (K&P host)  

WEDNESDAY 19 JUNE – TWICKENHAM (SMR)

WEDNESDAY 15 MAY – WALTON (Walton)

WEDNESDAY 3 JULY – ETON (BA)

WEDNESDAY 5 JUNE – EWELL COURT (E&E)

WEDNESDAY 17 JULY – WOKING (Woking)
 

FINAL WEDNESDAY 14 AUGUST – KINGSMEADOW

Visit the website for the timetable for all events at all events.

 

Eddie Giles


Windsor 20 miler (Sunday 24 March 2013) - Information

The club's priority is for everyone to come to the Track&Field on Sunday but if you need to do a longer run for instance as part of your London Marathon training then Joe has posted details of the Datchet Dashers 20 mile training run.  It also has you finishing at the right time and near to Eton for the Track & Field!

Details here.

Thejoenolan@aol.com


What has Adrian been up to?

Back to the indoor track season. Just won the British men's 45 and over 800m gold in 2:02.77.not far off my personal best which is really encouraging for this stage of the season. Had 2 races in last 3 weeks in SCVAC and South of England. Next stop is San Sebastian, Spain for the European indoors next week. Hope to go one better than my silver in Zittau last summer.

Adrian Haynes


Concorde Five Mile preparation

Club events don't happen by everyone simply turning up at the start line at the advertised time - all require a modest amount of preparation and some events quite a significant amount of early work.  As an example of one such preparation activity we had the proposed Concorde Five Mile course measured on Sunday morning to enable it to be a certified distance.  This required Steve Newell and myself meeting up with John Querstret, one of a select band of certified course measurers, at 07:30 in Cranford Park.  Together we cycled round the course that Paul Knechtl had estimated to be about five miles. John was careful to take in the course as it would be run - taking the short cuts that fast runners can and will take. He had already calibrated his bicycle for the day's conditions on a measured 300 metre and was able to work out that the proposed course was about 105 metres short of five miles.  This led to some considerations of exactly where the start and finish lines could be but we decided that we needed to add in an extra loop.  So we cycled round again to include that extra bit.  The course was now about 45 metres too long but it is relatively easy for us to move the start up by that distance (to the point in the picture).  We then left John to cycle round a third time to produce an exact course for the five mile distance and to note where the mile markers should be.  He'll now write up his report and apply for the certificate that we want for the race - so that we can then publicise it and runners can be confident that the course is no shorter than five miles.

John is one of the many individuals who give their time for free to enable us to get more from our running - though he did ask (in jest) that PK should run a little slower in next year's Surrey League meetings so that he could beat him!

 

There is a rough map of the course here http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5854349 .  The course starts in Cranford Park near St Dunstan's Church, goes round Cranford/Harlington in an anti-clockwise loop and finishes within the Parkway M4 roundabout. Please let us know if this rough mapping service works for you and is useful, or if it doesn't work for you.

Roderick Hoffman


Finchley20 Sunday March 17th Report

A slightly soggy second half didn't dampen the spirits of the indefatigable BA running distance fans, or indeed the race leaders who chased each other round eye-wateringly fast - triggering the sub-1:45 bonus prize (for one of them...)

Pos 
Forename 
Surname 
Club 
Time 
Sex 
Age 
1
Ben 
Fish 
Blackburn Harriers 
1.44.09 
M 
30
65
Chris 
Kelly 
British Airways 
2.14.11 
M 
47
161
Natalie 
Ruffell 
Team Ruffell 
2.34.12 
F 
22
211
Lissa 
Pritchard 
British Airways 
2.42.38 
F 
35
227
Ben 
Chaytow 
Stragglers RC 
2.45.03 
M 
36

502 runners completed the course, 503 including Gary Rushmer, who completed the course, but due to hamstring tightness, only thrice - discretion being the better part etc, etc. Rumours that he will receive a similar 100K payout to that Mo gets for doing half the London Marathon ... are as yet unconfirmed.

Regards,

Chris Kelly


Round Norfolk Relay. URGENT Request. Last week I asked for names for anyone interested in forming a team for the Round Norfolk Relay, a 24 hour relay race on 14/15 Sept, a race we have now run a number of times and always really enjoyed. So far I have half a team, so I really need to hear from you if you are interested. Our club has a priority entry, but only for a week, and I am being asked by the organisers if we intend to take this up or not. So it is really important I hear from you in the next few days if we are to commit ourselves to this event for 2013. So come on and join the team, I promise you will not regret it, please email me today, Richard.Ruffell@ba.com  Richard


Caption Competition Suggested Captions

Best entry by Susie M:

"Quick, drink up before the others get here"

Other entries:

"Well done on wining the 'Young Athlete of the Year' "

"Better increase the house insurance!"

"Give us a kiss - you are a winner"

"I don't believe it, I've only just given it back!!"

"I may struggle next year - a couple of the others have found the Hillingdon track"

"My cunning plan for the Veteran's League is roller casters on my Zimmer Frame!"


News for the next BAAC News Digest? Too much content this week - perhaps I should ask for less!

Please let us have your ideas for how club communications can be improved and please send us items for inclusion in the next Digest.  Results, news, feedback, jokes, stores - send it to us at news@barunner.org,uk.


Club website:

www.barunner.org.uk.


 

      

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