The Reindeer Romp

Tonight six of us ran in this race, This is an off road multi terrain course from the Reindeer Inn nr Wakefield, I have done this for a few years now and it never gets any easier, this year we have a slightly altered course ,for those of you who know the old course we now take a right at the end of the lane at the start omitting the down hill section .

I like this route better I think. it takes in some woods but we still have the hill at the end.
First back for spen in second place (again) Kevin Ogden, you're gonna have to sort that Kevin, Antony Bradford followed by Gerard Skippins (first time for him ) then Michael Howard, followed by myself and Elizabeth Bottomly (first time for Liz too) both have enjoyed it and are waiting for next months race the end of July.
Both Liz and I did a tough boot camp last night and don't know how we managed to race tonight.
Maybe we will give BC a miss for the next one to see if it makes any difference.
Thanks you guys for turning out hope you all enjoyed it , and the free chip butties afterwards.

Joe Percy 10k results

You need windows 2007 to be able to view these results. It won't let me copy and paste them into this :-( and I can't work out how to put an attachment into this blog! So here's spen results typed in manually:-

2nd place - Kev - 34.24
8th place - Tony Bradford - 36.17
21st place - Tony Bradford again! could this be Gerard? 37.33?
27th place - Dan Stuart - 38.36
102nd place - Richard Lee - 43.58
117th place - Mick Howard - 45.21
143rd place - Graham Walsh - 47.06
149th place - Emma Maguire - 47.29
156th place - Alan Whittaker - 48.04
184th place - Donna Winterbottom - 50.14
193rd place - Jackie Carter - 51.22
210th place - Hazel Pike - 53.12
215th place - Elizabeth Bottomley - 53.26
218th place - Suzanne Plimley - 53.46
257th place - Amanda Pearson - 61.27

269 ran the race in total

John Lunn - Leeds City

Just heard the sad news that John passed away in his sleep on Monday night.

John was a well known character in West Yorks athletic circles and a good friend to many people down at Spen.

John was passionate about his beloved Leeds City A.C. and would be seen at many events 'encouraging' the Leeds runners to perform to their maximum.

What a lot of people may not know is that John was an extremely talented athlete in his earlier years and his performances would have won many a race in more recent times.

John's enthusiasm for the sport never waned and recently was still trying to capture many of the Leeds City age group field event records.

I know he will be missed by many many people throughout athletics.

spen athleats at the lamm

Just a few lines to let people know that we do have some competing members left, be it that there sport is slightly different to track,and less appealing to some committee members.

In total 5 spen runners set off on Friday 11th June to compete in the low alpine mountain Marathon taking place at lock fynne in Scotland this is the connoisseurs event and very popular.

Steve Hemingway had to find a partner at the last minute, and he was lucky to get one off the lamm web site he completed the score class with very good results Mark& Josh completed the score with some trepidations as this was there first attempt at this type of event there second day went better than the first with some hard lessons learnt from there first day.(they are now looking forward to the Saunders in July as are we all) I my self had one very good event coming second vets team with Tim Sowood who partnered me last year.From an email from Chris King

who did the B class (witch is some what harder than the D class we did) he had a very good event and came 58th witch is very good as we only bagged to Munro's (hills over 3000 ft for those of you who might think its a walk in the park) and the b class did more than two. Sorry for the lack of detail but to do a write up of the hole event i would have to go see Kieth and get him to do the write up.

Well done Jackie Carter

Many thanks to Jackie for rising to the challenge and getting 15 runners out for the Joe Percy 10k.
I know a lot of time and effort went in to making this happen.

The Joe Percy 10k

What a fantastic turn out at the Joe Percy tonight Fifteen seniors made the effort and I would like to thank everyone for turning out for me,
The weather was kind to us ,Dry with a little wind .
Kevin race machine Ogden had a brill run just being piped to second by 6 seconds young Ben from Halifax harriers was first, another good run for Anthony Bradford chasing in in 8Th position.
Our first lady in was Emma M Gui re who had a good run closely followed in by Donna Winterbottom, both managed fab times on very little training,
A big well done to Hazel and Elizabeth because the three of us had very sore legs from boot camps strength training , it felt like I was trying to run through treacle at times, I would also like to thank Ian Ogden who just turned up to watch but got the job of writing our positions down as we finished, so thanks Ian,
Team photo & results will be on soon .

And then there were two

Unfortunately for the past few weeks there has only been myself and Gerrard turning up regularly for the track training on Thu nights with an occasional visit from others.

For these sessions to have maximum effect it requires as many people as possible to attend. Besides the training benefits it is a chance for athletes to meet, socialise have a laugh and organise racing etc.

I know its difficult for some people to get there made even more difficult by mid week races and track training isn't for everyone, but I believe it is an essential part of increasing speed and endurance for road racing.

As I see it there is little point committing myself to keep attending every Thursday and organise training sessions if nobody else is interested.

Please let me know your thoughts and if anybody wants to do anything different on a Thursday I am open to suggestions.

This is probably just a knock on effect of the gradual drop in the number of adult runners at Spen that have declined over the last few years. Shame that the club has done nothing to address this problem even though the committee has been made well aware of the situation.

Can't blame anybody in particular as there is little appetite from either officials or athletes to tackle this issue.

A sad day for myself really as starting as a young boy at Spen in the early 70's a with no real senior men's squad to speak of and seeing that team build from the likes of Richard Lee, Alan Whittaker and many others to become a force to be reckoned with in the north of England throughout the 80's and early 90's to arrive back where I started from is a difficult pill to swallow.

Thinking back now we haven't had a senior middle distance coach since my dad gave up in the late 80's. (Yep that 20 years!) maybe this is a reason too.

Spen over the years has prided itself as a club that 'caters for all' which may have been true at one time but unfortunately isn't anymore.

A lot of the issues have occurred due to lack of volunteers and a lot of the roles being carried out by a very small number of people.

Unfortunately, wether they like it or not, it becomes the responsiblity of the committee to find those helpers (or replacements) - however difficult.