Harrier Of The Month – August

Apologies that Harrier Of The Month for August is slightly delayed, as I’ve been away for a bit of it, but we’re delighted to bring you the awards for this month.

Very quickly – we have amended the form slightly to give you another question to tick which month’s Harrier Of The Month that you are nominating someone for. Hopefully this will make it simpler and clearer for how to nominate someone for the monthly award… and easier for us to tell if a nomination is for August or September!

But on to this month’s awards, switching back to starting with the men this month.

Harrier Of The Month – Men’s Award

After many of our recent Harrier Of The Month awards being for members who have excelled in their running performance, both of this month’s awards have gone to members who have contributed to the life of the club this month. The winner of the men’s award this month is Tobias Adkins who was nominated several times for organising the 2019 Leeds parkrun day, taking on all of the Leeds parkruns in one day. The second year Harriers have taken on this event, organisation of the challenge became an event in itself, with even more parkruns in Leeds starting in the past 12 months. This is both an amazing challenge for people who did all of the courses through the day, but also was a brilliantly inclusive event with people encouraged to come along for just one or two through the day. This is a great example of coming up with a new idea and ‘running’ with it to bring something new and different to the club. Toby went a step further this year and made the parkrun day a real milestone event for those completing the full list, all nine completed an Ultra Marathon before the day was out with a total of 45km covered!

There were several nominations this month for performances at the recent Leeds 5K Series race at the end of the Clubrun programme. Nominated for their performances were Greg Billenness for a 33 second PB, Jonathan Spain for a 30 second PB, and Mark Haddrill for a 35 second PB.

He’s been nominated before but Rolf Neugebager was nominated again this month for his amazing race photography.

Nominated for performances and contributions within our triathlon section were Aron Fulton for establishing the Monday evening social ride, Chris Worfolk for being the first member of the triathlon section since it was formed to complete the Ironman distance, Jack Rose for completing his first half-Ironman in 5h42m, and across the bike and run disciplines Farhad Hamad was nominated for completing a 100 mile bike sportive on the same day as running a leg of the Leeds Country Way Relay.

Several of our men were nominated for their ultra running achievements in August. Steve Rhodes was nominated for his performance at the Dales Way Challenge 82 mile Ultra and the 100K CCC race at the UTMB. Also receiving multiple nominations for their performances at the Dales Way Challenge Ultra were Matt Armstrong and Phil Hammond.

Harrier Of The Month – Women’s Award

This month the women’s award is shared between two Harriers who have both contributed to the success of major club events in the past month. This month the award is shared by Clare Evans and Rebecca Gray.

Clare organised our teams and participation in the Leeds Country Way Relay and was also nominated several times for this. The Leeds Country Way is a great fun event, but also involves a large amount of being the scenes organisations in pulling together teams, backups, organising recces of legs and organising people getting to and from the start and ends of their legs on the day. Ultimately though all of Clare’s hard work goes in to putting on Hyde Park Harrier teams in a huge Leeds event with every Harrier in each team enjoying an amazing day running as a team.

Rebecca organised our Country Trail Race event again this year. The Country Trail Race is a self-guided trail race which like the Leeds park run day is now in it’s second year, and has been a real passion of Becky’s to get off the ground – and one of the items on her ‘before 30’ to-do list (for the first edition). Organising this event has been entirely Becky’s initiative, and this year the event will bring in just over £400 to the club, helping us to fund the activities that we run as a club.

The men were not the only ones receiving several nominations for their performances at the August Leeds 5K Series race. Alison Hargreaves was nominated for a PB at the August race which she then followed up with a PB over the mile early in September, Debbie Brown was nominated for a 40 second PB, Jo Rhodes for a one minute PB, and Vicky Houghton for a 57 second PB. Away from the Leeds 5K Series, Grace Roberts was also nominated for her 5K PBs and across other distances, and also for being a regular leader of group 2 through August.

With many of those performances coming off the back of the Clubrun programme, it was only right that both Amy Young and Nicola Forwood were nominated for helping to bring this England Athletics programme to Hyde Park Harriers.

And just like with the Leeds 5K Series performances, it wasn’t just the men being nominated for their ultra running performances. Chloe Brooks received several nominations for her performance at the Liverpool to Leeds 130 mile Ultra, and Laura Hastings also received several nominations for her performance at the Squamish 50.

Last but by no means least are the Harriers nominated for their contribution to the club in August. Jan Glynn was nominated this month for the huge unseen job she does in organising all of the leaders for our Tuesday sessions, leading Tuesday groups and also leading the Kirkstall Hills session, and Lucy Rider was nominated for leading Strength and Speed sessions and training for her CiRF coaching qualification, and for starting to offer marathon coaching to club members.

Congratulations to our Harrier Of The Month winners for August! It has been fantastic reading all of the nominations and seeing how appreciated people’s contributions are by fellow members and how respected their achievements are, and as ever it has been difficult choosing monthly winners. We look forward to seeing all of your nominations for September nominations.

Happy running!

Phil Fisher