Chair’s Blog – October

Welcome to the Chair’s Blog for October. I’m fully aware that some of you may be wondering where August and September have gone, and the truth is that life has again taken over and the Chair’s Blog seems to have drifted to the bottom of the pile, but don’t worry – we’re back now!

Keeping you up to date with all of the things that are going on with the club, we recently had our Open Committee Meeting. This is a great opportunity to tell you all what is going on and hear feedback, but it’s also excitingly where we get to do our London Marathon club places draw. We were really excited that Lizzie and Bartosz drew the places, and are now fully signed up for the marathon. I’m looking forward to following their journeys and those of all the other Harriers running spring marathons – and getting busy with my own training!

We also announced our PECO captains for the year, and everyone in the club is now very excited for the start of the cross country season. The cross country season is a great opportunity for everyone to get involved and for all of us to support every single runner across the finish line, and I’m delighted that we have three great PECO captains in Sarah, Zeni and Adam who will make sure that we are doing just that.

The OCM is also a great opportunity as Chair to hand over to other members of the committee to report on the ‘work streams’ that they are responsible for, and highlight the hard work that they are putting into different areas. While it’s true to some extent that a club can’t work, and things won’t happen, without a committee (of course plus everyone who volunteers for the club outside of those roles), one of the things I’m quickly learning in this role is that equally a Chair can’t function without a committee full of dedicated and hard working people.

I’ve written this blog just after the Harrier Of The Month blog, and I’m really pleased this is going so well. It’s great to have the chance to recognise people for their achievements and what they do for the club, and also to give you the chance to shout out about other members achievements.

Excitingly at our last committee meeting we discussed our race calendar for the upcoming championship season for 2020/21. As a committee we have bought this discussion forward in the year, as we have previously wanted to include some races that had already opened and sold out. All of the races have now been decided, and we will be sending these out as soon as possible so that you can start planning your event calendars for the next year – some of the events are already open.

October as a month seems to have flown by for run club with the OCM replacing one week and the decision not to run for safety reasons during Bonfire Night. We continue to be indebted to everyone who steps forward to lead week in, week out. There is some great work going on to support our leaders, particularly Amy who recently organised a great leaders forum event, and Sarah Underwood who has worked on the new leaders guide document.

Our next big event coming up now is the Christmas party (get yourself signed up!) and hopefully my next blog will be reporting on the success of a great event.

Happy running!

Philip Fisher

Hyde Park Harriers Chair