New year update

Were back training around the streets of west Bromwich now the lighter evening have gone but for those who don’t like training in the dark meeting up on Sunday mornings has been a great success with the 3 groups becoming well established. I’ve also heard that a couple of track sessions have taken place with Ryan and James, definitely something that we can add to our training schedule away from Wednesday evenings. Great to see the club is progressing all the time!

Member news.

We had the pleasure of supporting Bev on her 500^th park run at Walsall Arboretum. I think she is our 1^st club member to have completed as many! Be interesting to know who’s next?

Well done to Chris Davis who won the boxing day handicap, feigning injury for 9 months to get a good head start! Ben finished 2^nd for the second year in a row. It’s all good fun and a long time tradition of the club, thanks again to John for sorting out the start times.

Congratulations to Och and wife on the birth their beautiful girl Anandi, hope to see you back at the club when you’re back to full fitness.

Alex Mouton, (Lexi) has decided to take a break away from the club to prioritise on her studies and we look forward to her return when she has more time. Thanks, Lexi for all the work you put into the club being the woman’s team captain when the numbers were low making sure we had representation at all the events and attracting more members through your park run takeovers and helping with the promotional side with the leaflet design and printing. So hopefully it’s not goodbye but see you later.

We have said goodbye to Olivia Blezard and Lucy Martin who have moved to Middlesbrough on placement as nurses in the British Army. We wish them every success in their future careers and thank them for their time training with and representing us in the XC and Sutton relays.

Oli has started his run leader qualification with the aim of taking the coaching course next with the development of a junior team eventually, Laura is going to complete the welfare officer qualification and Chris Davis and Daniel are also going to start the Leadership in running program this year. (Anyone who wishes to take up a running program the club will happily support you).

You have been competing in too many races for me to mention them all, I know of the Malvern half, Snyd pudding run 10 mile, Altern Towers Half, Coventry 10K, Derby 10K, amongst others! I’ll put any photos you have here.

Club News

Thanks to Greg who organised a fantastic Quiz night on the last Wednesday before Christmas. The night was open to all including guests. Best team name was “him and the 3 Ho’s” (Chris, Gulshanara, Laura and Charlotte) who finished in last place, even with the help of Blind Dave for the picture round! Craig, Graham, David and Katherine took 1^st place. Pete took a couple of scratch cards around contributing to £74 donated to the Albion Foundation on Carl’s just giving page when he runs the Birmingham half. Hopefully we can do it all again this year.

The purchase of a new insta 360 camera has helped Tom produce some great YouTube videos that’s a catalogue of the clubs history and we can’t thank Tom enough for putting them together! I don’t know of any other clubs doing this.

We will be representing West Brom at the XC Nationals again this February 24^th at Weston Park, Telford. Coincidentally on the same day as Ben’s birthday (Poster boy for the Cadair X half marathon)so a stop off on the way home to celebrate may be in order.

Also as usual the 6 and 12 stage road relays held at Sutton park in April, A great event attended by some of the top runners in the midlands.

I hope to see you all at the annual AGM that will be held on February 14^th. It’s your chance to have an input on how the club is run with recommendations or putting yourself forward for a more active roll and find out what the plans are for the coming year and long-term plans for the direction of the club.