Hi ladies. The summer has finally come and I hope you are all enjoying running in the sunshine. Don’t forget to put your suncream on and plan your hydration so that your runs are nothing but enjoyable. Rodger has put the directions for August’s trail on the website, so hopefully loads of you will be out doing that on a sunny day. And a new training calendar has been put on the website, with lots of opportunities to get together and run, so take a look at that and plan your summer with GBRC.
News and Notices
Essex Way Relay
I am excited to say that we have a full team of 10 runners for the Essex Way Relay on September 1st. If you have signed up, then you will have received an email from Lisa telling you which leg you are running. It is advisable to do a reconnaissance run prior to the day – taking a pen with you to make notes on the directions so that you don’t get lost on race day.
Why not also ask friends to come on your recce with you? The day of the relay clashes with our GBRC club trip to the Yorkshire 3 peaks, and so some people are missing out on being able to do the Essex Way Relay – but that doesn’t mean they can’t go out and enjoy the route and this could be as part of recce trips. Directions for the various legs are found here :https://www.essexway.org.uk/
Geoff Day memorial 5k– 11th August
The Geoff Day memorial 5k will be on 11 August. We hope to see lots of you at Bentley as this is a great club event in memory of a super runner. Please do come and support the run and of course bring along a sweet treat or a savoury snack for sharing after if you can.
XC Relays – 12th October
The XC season begins with the Essex XC relay in October. We will be gathering names for a team closer to the time, so for now, just save the date if this interests you!
The NESS league is currently arranging the dates of the coming season so we will forward these to you once they are final.
GBRC parkrun and social
The parkrun and social idea has been adopted by the men’s squad and is a monthly event… and they are more than happy that the ladies join so these have become GBRC parkrun and social.
The coming dates and venues are
Clare Castle 17 Aug;
Mersea 28 Sept;
Thornham Walks 26 Oct;
Bury St Edmunds 23 Nov;
Highwoods 7 Dec.
You will note that the venues are all off road – perhaps Charlie is trying to prepare us all for XC?
Our Ladies Squad
A warm welcome to new ladies in our squad, I hope you are enjoying sessions with GBRC so far.
What we did
I shan’t repeat the race reports as our reporters do a fantastic job! If you want to see what everyone is up to, the race reports can be found here: https://gbrc.org.uk/category/race-reports/
From what I can see it really has been a month of success for the ladies! At Spitfire Scramble Helen and Sarah were part of a team that took home a trophy. And it’s excellent to see Sarah back in the mix both at Spitfire and at Ekiden after her surgery last November.
Ekiden of course had loads of us running around Ipswich high school on a day that didn’t know if it was sunny or not. Well done to all who ran – with special mention to Andrea and Milly who were part of the category winning team. I think our success here shows that the system we have of people being in “social” or “competitive” teams is working to provide everyone with the Ekiden they most enjoy.
The day before Ekiden I had taken myself off to north Norfolk to race my first Triathlon. I was really pleased to take home a category win and can only credit that to the conditioning XC gives to my legs as that run course was muddy!
Later in July Lisa couldn’t help but represent the blue vests when she found out about a race local to her holiday location. Another prize for a lady from our squad, and I suspect Lisa will credit hills training given the Cornish landscape. See: all the training sessions benefit you in some way!
Flying the GBRC flag over the very long distance was Caroline Dyer at the Round Reading Ultra. That one does exactly what it says and runner go on a circular route around Reading. Well done Caroline on completing the 50km multi-terrain course in under 7 hours.
Further afield, Mags appears to be atop every podium going in Poland! Well done Mags, representing GBRC internationally.
And you can’t win a parkrun – but you can have a jolly fun time and it looks like the GBRC ladies have been doing that! Well done for Bee completing the namely challenge (I looked up if I was close on this one, and I for sure need to find more parkruns that start with E and O). If you don’t already have it, the “5k runner” app (free from the app store / google play) has several pre-loaded challenges you can work to complete and is very easy to use.
Runner of the month
When it came to Runner of the Month, when Lisa and I discussed I did mention the lady who had run Ekiden the day after her first triathlon more than once (😉).
However, Lisa and I really did feel that the achievements of this lady were superb and thoroughly deserving. Three podium finishes at various events in one month is certainly not to be ignored! And she also put in a hard shift at Ekiden despite not feeling 100% at that time.
So it is with great pleasure that I give this month Runner of the Month award to Magdalena Komorowska! Well done Mags: you’ve done Great Bintly proud.
Great Bentley Running Club 