Hi ladies! It’s been another busy month in blue. February saw the end of our cross country season, and we fought hard to avoid relegation and retain our position in Pool A of the NESS XC League. Road racing season also started in earnest, including our very own Great Bentley half marathon, with Mel doing a great job in her first year as Race Director for the event.

More of your achievements coming up later, but let’s start with what’s on the horizon in the coming months.

NEWS AND NOTICES

Club Annual General Meeting (AGM) – Wednesday 3 April

Our annual club meeting will take place at Great Bentley Village Hall on Wednesday 3 April. It’s a great opportunity for us to get together to hear from the Committee about the past year, plans for the year ahead and an open forum for members to raise any ideas or queries. We usually have a short social run beforehand too.

If there is more than one candidate for any Committee position and a vote is held, the result of this will also be announced at the AGM. Please join us if you can, it would be great to see you.

Essex Road Relays – Sunday 7 April

Meera and I are collecting names for this fun team event taking place at Colchester Sports Park on Sunday 7 April. It’s also my birthday, and I’ll bring cake!

The ladies’ race is at 10.50am. Each leg is approximately 3 miles and the event is open to all abilities. If you’d like to sign up, we’d love to have you.

To sign up, please email me by Thursday 14 March at lisabriggs416@gmail.com with your full name, date of birth, and whether you were born in Essex or have been resident in Essex for over 9 months (you can run either way, we just need to know for the entry forms).

Barbara’s Charity Trail Run – Saturday 27 April

Barbara is celebrating her birthday week by kindly hosting a fundraising trail run for St Helena Hospice from her home in Fordham Heath. The distance will be 5 or 7 miles and you can take part any time between 9.30am and 12.30pm, with refreshments also being served. What more could you want? Further details will be circulated by email so look out for those.

Mickey Edwards Series – starts Wednesday 1 May

The Mickey Edwards 5k series, which is the club’s 5k summer handicap series, begins with the baseline run on Wednesday 1 May. The subsequent races are:

• Wednesday 15 May – 1st handicap race
• Wednesday 29 May – 2nd handicap race
• Wednesday 12 June – 3rd handicap race
• Wednesday 26 June – Final handicap race

Slower runners are set off first, with the fastest going off last.  Points are awarded in the order runners finish and at the end of the series the person with the most points wins. You can run in as many or as few of these as you please, but you need to run in at least 3 races to qualify for the overall series standings (and the trophy!)

Ladies parkrun social and XC runner of the year – Saturday 8 June

Now that XC season is over, the Ladies Captain traditionally takes votes for your ‘Ladies XC Runner of the Year’ and we have a social to celebrate the end of the season and announce the result. However, we are also a little overdue another parkrun ladies get-together, so Meera and I thought we could combine the two!

Please keep Saturday 8 June free to join us at parkrun (location TBC) and have a social coffee/breakfast afterwards, where we’ll also take the opportunity to announce the winner. We’ll be in touch soon by email with more details about the social and how to vote.

Friday 5 series

Entries are now open for this popular series of local summer 5 mile races held on Friday evenings. However, please do not enter the Great Bentley race on Friday 5 July, as we’ll be calling for volunteers to marshal our race (with names being drawn to run from those who volunteer, providing we have enough volunteers). Therefore, please still save the date in your diaries!

Ipswich Ekiden – Sunday 7 July

Just a ‘save the date’ for now – Ipswich Ekiden is back at the same venue at last year (Ipswich School), but on the slightly earlier date of Sunday 7 July.

If the word ‘Ekiden’ is new to you, it’s a team-based event where you run marathon distance in teams of six. We usually enter around 10 teams in this event, and it’s a really busy, fun event involving many local running clubs. We’ll send an email nearer the time about how to sign up to take part.

WELCOME

Welcome to Milly Presland, who has joined the club this month. Many of us already know Milly, but it’s great to see that she’ll now officially be in blue!

WHAT WE DID THIS MONTH

• We braved the rain and hills at Hadleigh and the ladies team placed 4^th in Pool A at the final NESS XC fixture
• Donna Harris, Zoe Reynolds, Debbie Smith and Magdalena Komorowska did us proud at our half marathon (in challenging windy conditions), and we all enjoyed cheering them on
• Laura Cook completed her 100^th parkrun at Lowestoft
• Bee Harris took an astonishing 7 minutes off her half marathon PB at the Leicestershire Half Marathon
• Caroline Dyer turned a training run into a 10 mile PB, by over 2 minutes, at Tarpley
• Caroline Searle, Magdalena Komorowska and Hien Hoang also impressed at Tarpley on the 20 mile route

And now we come to our Runner of the Month …

I can’t think of a month when this lady hasn’t been in the ‘running’ (no pun intended) for this accolade. She is consistently out training hard and racing year-round, achieving great things and inspiring so many of us.

As usual, she has been a stalwart of our ladies cross country team this season, helping us on our way to some of our best finishing positions. She also had great runs at the Great Bentley half marathon and Tarpley 20, despite them being training runs as part of her marathon training.

Our Runner of the Month for February is … Magdalena Komorowska! Congratulations Mags!