HPH Chair’s Update and Harrier of the Month for November

It’s December already, Harriers! This month we can get back to running as a club, and we can also run past  all the beautiful trees and Christmas decorations in a bid to feel festive.

Despite a month-long lockdown, you lot haven’t rested on your laurels. There have been quizzes and challenges galore and several of you have been out running races of your own kind. Absolutely massive kudos to all of you who have managed to follow training plans and get out running over this time, it’s not easy. 

To those of you struggling for motivation, remember that from next Tuesday 8th December, club sessions will be back on in the same format as before in smaller groups of 6, meeting in various places around the city. Get onto Spond and sign up from 7pm Friday 4th Dec.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that this month’s Hyde Park Harriers of the month are Curtis Parker-Milnes and Lucy Rider. Curtis Parker-Milnes has deservedly won this month for his incredible (19:44!) 5km PB and training plan from which it resulted. Well  done, CPM, you’ve worked so hard for that!

Lucy Rider was nominated for the Daylight Saving Minds initiative which got us all out getting all that all important COVID-fighting Vitamin D during lockdown. The photos and stories shared from this challenge brought us together as a group and also brought together a number of HPH to run or walk together. Thanks Lucy!

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Here are this month’s other nominees:

• Anne Akers for all her motivation work for the club and for parkrunners throughout 2020. Also for the panto that’s she’s written herself and is directing via zoom. See it for yourself in it’s full glory on December 19th.
• Grace Roberts for her awesome Sunday race quizzes where over 20 Harriers took part in a Whatsapp race quiz, racing to get the lowest time to answer 10 running related facts. Grace coordinated it all herself, and smoothly executed the idea through extreme copy and pasting actions. Well done to everyone that took part, too.
• Tom Thomas for LURGY and his general looking out for members: keeping us running and motivated through a lovely little competitive community.
• Laura Garratt for knocking 11 minutes off her half marathon PB following another awesome lockdown training block.
• Tobias Adkins for his Facebook 7pm Thursday quizzes and his amazing running achievements over the past few months. Toby has managed to maintain a really high mileage per week, whilst achieving several PBs throughout this challenging year.
• Zeni Bellwood for all she does in the background and foreground for the club including the weekly bulletin, looking out for our members and loads of other little club-running tasks. Zeni is also the mastermind behind the idea of HPH Christmas cards this year!

Another announcement this month, landing on your doormats soon, is that this year we are hosting the first ever (and hopefully last!) virtual HPH Christmas panto and quiz on the 19th December. Everyone is welcome, we’d love to see you all dressed up in your most festive attire (think santa hats, reindeer costumes, festive zoom backgrounds… go all out!). Also, if you have any festive quiz questions, we are collecting them. Check your emails for how to submit any questions.

Finally, as always, keep an eye out on the weekly bulletin emails and in the Facebook group for more information about virtual races, competitions and quizzes to keep us all busy over the next month or so. If you have any ideas for a quiz or challenge, please get in touch with the committee by emailing hello@hydeparkharriers.co.uk or messaging one of us directly on facebook. You know who we are. But if you don’t, you can find out here.