SHAEF Shifters Running Club Annual Report & Update, June 2020

To all club members.

Hope you and your families are all well and this message also finds you both fit and enjoying your running in the fine conditions we have been experiencing.

Reflecting back on our 2019/20 club year, for the majority of it we enjoyed participation in a broad range of activities from 1 mile races on the track, relays, parkrun tourism, autumn marathons to ultra distances with Sunday 8 am meet-ups, an overseas trip, an exciting draw for the club’s 1st ever official London marathon place, a Christmas quiz and traditional team curry evening. Many impressive performances and targets were delivered with great levels of support and camaraderie along the way. None of us suspected that there would be no spring marathons and that we would be ‘virtual’ racing during 2020!

Following our successful application to participate in and then the subsequent cancellation of the Surrey League road race programme, a huge thanks must go to our race captains Kit Powney and Oliver Edwards for launching in its place our own ‘virtual’ league which is proving very popular. Also thanks to Rodney MuCullock for hosting the ‘virtual’ Arethusa Mile, which although not a club activity many of you are participating in each week. These and other virtual races have been the big revelation this current club year, giving us something to focus on, to use all that hard earned and unspent marathon training fitness to bag some incredible performances and providing much entertainment as we all work out how to operate in these unusual times. I suspect that virtual racing will not be going away even when restrictions are eventually lifted.

The 2020/21 club year started at the beginning of April. We paid our registration fees to England Athletics (EA) in April and continue to be an affiliated club. EA have issued instructions to all clubs about activities during the period of lockdown and we have and will continue to follow these as the restrictions are eased. This link gives the latest EA guidance, please familiarise yourself with it: https://www.englandathletics.org/athletics-and-running/news/guidance-update-step-2/

EA have also advised that individual athlete registrations for the 2019/20 year will remain valid for an extended period (until 31st August). Your committee decided to delay club membership renewals for the time being to allow the way forward to become clearer. We also have sufficient funds, largely due to the success of the fund raising at last year’s AGM and fees from membership numbers of ~50, meaning there has been no immediate requirement to seek new fees to meet our commitments. However, we have some new friends now wishing to join our club and become affiliated to EA so we will shortly be opening up the membership process for these new folks along with renewals for existing SHAEF Shifters. Further details of the process will follow shortly.

Obviously it is a challenge to plan much into the future but we will look to hold our AGM as soon as safe gatherings are permitted. Following last year’s AGM Oliver Edwards expressed an interest in joining the committee and we are delighted to have Ollie on board as kit officer, and thank him for finding a new quality kit manufacturer (EV2). The rest of the committee have agreed to continue in place until such time as we can go through the formal AGM process of (re)appointments. Thanks to all the committee for their efforts and additional thanks to Ian Fullen for producing the club’s account’s (attached). Please rest assured that the committee is actively discussing the way forward for the club and will shortly be seeking your views through an online survey. As always, please do not hesitate to contact any of your club officers if you have anything you wish to discuss about SHAEF Shifters. In the meantime, thanks for being part of our club, stay safe, continue to support and encourage each other, and enjoy your running.

Gary Neville

Chair, SHAEF Shifters Running Club