HPH Chair’s Blog and HOTM for June

June sees the highlight of the HPH race calendar: the Summer Mile. Woodhouse Moor was alive last week with hundreds of runners and volunteers. It was fantastic to see so many of you all out running and helping make the event such a success.

Also this month, we saw the Leeds Triathlon, the Eccup 10, the Otley 10, several fell races and a number of amazing individual performances at a huge range of distances. With the opportunity to volunteer at the Summer Mile, a number of nominations were seen for the President’s award too, which recognises club members for their contribution to the club whilst the Chair’s Award recognises individual performance.

There was a tie this month, so instead of 2, we have 3 Harriers of the Month for June. Our winners this month are: Chloe Brooks, Abdu Ahmed and Steve Brown!

Chloe completed the 145 mile Grand Union Canal Race in 36 hours. This was 2 hours faster than last year and her prediction. Rumour has it, this is the first of three canal races Chloe is running this year. Look out for her on a towpath near you!

Abdu was nominated 3 times in June for his consistently fantastic performances over the month despite having only started running in March!

Steve was nominated for his amazing achievement of running the 70 mile The Wall race along Hadrian’s Wall. Steve’s not been able to train to his usual levels for a number of reasons, so his 22 hour run looks even more incredible with this knowledge.

Once again, please make sure you find time to read all of the nominations below, as there are some amazing things happening in HPH world every month, and it’s great to see all these people being recognised for their achievements and their contributions to our lovely club.

• The Summer Mile team – for putting on yet another (the 11th, in fact) incredible Summer Mile event. With a nearly sold out event that raised over £390 for charity and 390 peoples hearts rates with some fantastic PBs on the night, it’s safe to say this event is the highlight of the HPH calendar. Thanks also to all the amazing HPH volunteers, but mainly to Sam Dooley, Julie Robson, Debbie Brown, Kay Jefferies and Jonathan Spain our fantastic race team.
• Ally Fellows – Ally came 3rd place at Leeds Triathlon Yorkshire championships! He put in an outstanding performance whilst overcoming a difficult start to his race and finished really strongly.
• Daniel Allison – Despite still struggling with after effects of COVID, Daniel has been really helpful in getting involved with leading out Thursday intervals sessions. He’s also a regular as a parkrun volunteer. This is great to see.
• Naomi Miles – Naomi’s performance in Cardiff with a 4th place finishing ensuring that she re-qualified for another GB Age Group squad. She’s relentless! Following that, she ticked off a mile PB at the Summer Mile last week. Amazing.
• Robyn Johnson – Robyn completed the Race to the King ultra of 100km over 2 days. She’s put in so much dedication to doing this race, having had to postpone twice over the years. When I first saw the updates I thought it was only a single day event, so was going to nominate her on the merit of completing 50km, I can’t imagine how challenging it is to sleep and then do the same thing again the next day. Incredible. Well done!
• Steve Brown – Steve completed the Wall 70 mile race in 22 hours after not being able to commit to his usual level of training. No mean feat and an amazing finish time Steve.
• Vicky Houghton – for 3 PBs in one month! Armley parkrun, Eccup 10 and Summer Mile! Nothing is stopping Vicky at the moment. She’s also brilliant running company.

As always, keep an eye out on the weekly bulletin emails and in the Facebook group for more information about races, discounts, sessions and club activity. If you have any ideas for sessions, any feedback or want to organise a social or event, please get in touch with the committee by emailing us at hello@hydeparkharriers.co.uk or messaging one of us directly on Facebook – hopefully you know who we are! If you don’t, you can find out here.

Our next meeting is on Sunday 25th July – make sure you send us anything for discussion before then. We are having a break for the summer in August, so heads up that between 25th July and 2nd September there will not be a committee meeting.

Don’t forget you can submit any future HPH of the Month nominations as well as nominations for other successes for next year’s Awards Do at any time of the month/year at this link.