HPH Chair’s Blog and HOTM for October

Well, October must win its own award for being a fantastic month in the world of HPH. We firstly kicked off with a weekend in Munich on the must-anticipated and fantastically organised club trip. Upwards of 70 Harriers joined thousands of others in what can only be described as an EPIC trip. Massive thanks all round to all of you who made that happen.

We also did some other racing this month. Yorkshire Marathon and 10 mile race; the Abbey Dash, st Aidan’s Half Marathon – so races for all of you across the month with some great performances.

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: the club trip organisers (Sarah Underwood, George Anderson and Kate Solomon) and Flick Burton.

Flick was nominated for a smashing marathon time at Munich. Here’s her nominations:

  • Well I’ve nominated for chair’s award but I guess maintaining your training whilst accepting a job in a capital city at the other end of the country, moving house and starting said job could be considered some significant barriers to consistency. That being said. The victory lap of months of focus, sacrifice and bloody hard graft was completed over 26.2miles on the Munich streets in 2:58:58. Congrats Flick on breaking both the Club record and also , I’m told, the Burton family marathon record!! Great work.
  • What else can I say but a crazily good race in the Munich marathon! To hit a sub 3 marathon is an incredible achievement and I get the impression she’s just getting started. She even managed to balance a pint on her head at the post-race social. Amazing work Flick!
Flying Flick

Sarah Underwood, George Anderson and Kate Solomon (dream club trip team) were nominated a number of times for doing a smashing job of organising the first club trip for a number of years, with a bumper record attendance. Not only did they make a great team, they individually they found their own groove, too. Here are their nominations:

  • Sarah was part of the 3 who organised the club trip and she did an amazing job! Everyone had a brilliant time and it went about as smoothly as it could have. She also SMASHED the Munich Marathon which was so well deserved after the training she’s been putting in. Well done Sarah!
  • George was part of the group who organised the trip and he did an amazing job, especially in the restaurant where he coordinated the serving of a huge number of dishes whilst his own had already been served. He also smashed the half marathon with an incredible time. Well done George!
  • Kate was part of the group who organised the trip and she did a phenomenal job. She was so helpful, assisting in the restaurant serving people’s meals and coordinating everything, and filling up people’s water bottles in the airport. Well done Kate!!
Club Trip Heroes, Kate, George and Sarah

The other October nominations were as follows, well done to all of you brilliant people:

  • Abdu Ahmed – Smashing the club half-marathon record and then going on to get 10km, 5km and parkrun PBs in the space of one week later in the month.!
  • Jonny Spain – A PB performance in Munich – great work Jonny!
  • Jason Newell:
    • For running brilliantly recently. Jason has taken his comeback to running really seriously, ensuring to protect himself and stay in this running game for the long haul. His training has been great, and it’s been well and truly demonstrates by a smashing marathon time at the Yorkshire marathon this month. Well done.
    • For running a marathon PB (taking over 3 hours off his previous one, apparently!) 6 weeks after running 107 miles round mint blanc. The things you do for a few whiskeys.
      For organising a simply brilliant club trip
  • George Anderson:
    • Not content with helping to organise the trip, he also scored a brilliant PB at Munich which would have been a club record only for Abdu to run quicker!
    • George has been a busy little bee this month. He was part of the team which organised the very successful Munich club trip. I know plenty of Harriers had a great time. George has also been on the pb trail. George has been consistently awesome for some years now and we sometimes forget he actually still improves. In Munich, George got a new half marathon pb of 1.16.06, which is actually broke the club record by 4 seconds (although Abdu broke it by more in the same race). George also got a shiny new pb of 34.06 in the Abbey dash too. George has been on fire with his running and planning skills this month. We’ll done on both fronts!
  • Naomi and Graeme – A general nomination in the fantastic work they’ve done growing the swim sessions from a very sparse group of “every weekers” to a weekly sell out. Naomi has put together a plan of fantastic swim sessions to engage a very mixed ability group as well as enabling a growing cache of talented coaches to develop poolside. Great work and much appreciated!
  • Rupert Jordan – for a ridiculous sub 2:45 performance at the Chicago marathon and a 10k PB at the Abbey Dash.
  • Sam Hadfield – Sam has really upped his game by being a regular fixture of Group 7. He has been very much dedicated to his training for Munich Half Marathon these past number of months. On the big day itself he delivered a 💎 performance and crushed his half marathon pb by 6 or so minutes. Whilst agonisingly close to his targeted 1hr 30, the way he is improving, it will be shattered before too long.
    Top draw work Sam 👍”
  • Honor Baldry – Incredible well execute race at the Abbey Dash resulting in a huge 10K PB!
  • Nick Shakhlevich – A brilliant first marathon, and generally being a top bloke!
  • Ellie Williams – For stepping up to lead groups for the first time and, by all accounts, smashing it!
  • Coralie Bell – For stepping up to lead groups for the first time and, by all accounts, smashing it!

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 27th November 2022 – make sure you send us anything for discussion before then, we then have a break for Christmas before our meeting in January.