HPH Chair’s Blog and HOTM for November

We’ve had 11 months of this awesome year for HPH and it’s been amazing to read all about everyone’s achievements month after month. Well done to you all for making our club what it is.

November saw a number of events and races for the club. We had the regular York and Leeds 5kms, the return of PECO at Middleton, the Guy Fawkes 10 and its cracking gift bag and a couple of fell and trail races to top it all off. Great HPH turnouts and performances at all of these, including PBs at 5km for a number of our members. Well done to you all for setting yourselves up for a great winter season.

In December we can look forward to a number of socials: first Tuesday of the Month, Christmas Party and the Christmas tree run with drinks to follow, but also lots of running. We have another round of PECO on the 18th December, this time at Temple Newsam with its famed water jump, and we have the awesome Bah Humbug race on the 11th December, closing the year out with the Boxing Day feast that is the Chevin Chase. Throw in some festive parkruns in between and I’m sure we will be ready and raring to go in 2023.

As a reminder, you can now find all of the championship standings on our website: https://www.hydeparkharriers.co.uk/race/

Our winners this month are: Honor Baldry and Sam Townson!

Sam Townson: Sam has come on leaps and bounds recently, with some brilliant performances at the Brownlee 5k, PECO, and the Leeds Uni XC relays. He’s also led plenty of groups, often stepping up when we’re short on leaders – what a hero! Well done Sam. Sam finished 6th HPHer and 36th overall in his first PECO race and also achieved a 5k PB of 17:30 in the same month! Sam has also recently started leading groups (for both club sessions and North running club).

Honor Baldry: For an incredibly well executed training plan resulting in a 3:11 marathon time in Valencia. Honor stuck religiously to her plan and despite feeling a bit sluggish on the day, she smashed her time and qualified for a London marathon championship time! Well done!

Our other nominations this month are below. Some of these are from December – but we’ve included them here before we consume too much beer in December and forget!

• Ally Fellows: For being a loyal founding member of the pre parkrun squad and smashing out some big interval sessions – and he was rewarded with a monster PB at the final Leeds 5k of the year! His splits are gonna be bananas at Brass Monkey!
• Frazer Carr: a huge Marathon PB (Sub 3); amazing training block paid off, well earnt PB
• Ally Fellows: Fantastic performance at Brownlee 5k.
• Toby Adkins: Toby consistently performs at events. He has had an amazing November with the post hill challenge, Hardmoors 80 and then PECO the following day, making it all look easy and supporting others at the same time too. On top of this he manages to lead groups nearly every Tues.
• Coralie bell: A 1:26 HM when she didn’t think she could even do a 1:28! And for being so cheerful and awesome.
• Toby Adkins and Tom Thomas: Amazing pacing duties at the Lancaster HM last weekend – thanks to them both for amazing encouragement, dedication and incredible energy to get us through a tough 1:26 of running.
• Becki Gray: For coming back to PECO with a BANG! Becki ran brilliantly at Middleton which truly shows how great form she is in. Well done Becki
• Lou Gardham: For showing up without fail to fell races and awesome adventurous trail races. Despite a couple of injuries, Lou has been really consistent with her running and is so dedicated to it. This shows in her performances and in her motivation to other Harriers to also attend races that might otherwise be out of their comfort zone.
• Colin Tranter: For his dedication to the fell championships and great performances consistently throughout the year. Colin’s fell running is phenomenal.
• Laura Garratt and Grace Roberts: Taking the lead on getting the club champs published on the HPH website
• Amy Ramsden-Young: In addition to regularly running brilliantly, including recently smashing out a half marathon time worthy of a London marathon champs place, Amy does so much work behind the scenes of HPH to keep the club going from strength to strength. Amy leads the committee so ridiculously well and does an enormous amount of work herself to keep the club running. Thanks for everything you do Amy.
• Lizzie Coombes: I hope Lizzie doesn’t mind me saying that’s she’s had a bit of a rough year with her health but despite this, she still turns up regularly to club night and gets her run in. She regularly supports club runs by backmarking and helping out leaders, and she’s amazing at supporting her friends (both for running and non running stuff!). Her determination is incredible and it’s lovely to she her loving up through the groups again. Well done Lizzie.
• Caroline Sanders: for running a half marathon exactly 2 years after being told she’d never run again. What an absolute demonstration of grit and determination.
• Clare Maxwell: for completing 100 parkrun venues at Bushy Park.
• Nicola Forwood: for completing two marathons in two days despite falling over on the first one.

A great number of nominations this month; thank you to everyone who took the time to nominate a fellow Harrier. Keep them coming over the winter months! Any HPH of the Month nominations, as well as nominations for other successes for next year’s Awards Do, can be submitted at any time of the month/year at this link.

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 committee meeting is on Sunday 15th January 2023 – make sure you send us anything for discussion before then, or if you need anything before then, you know where to find us!