Berkshire Trail Runners - First Quarterly Committee Meeting.
25th July 2018
The BTR committee met this evening to discuss the future of our club…
Firstly we would like to thank everyone for helping to make this club a success, in particular Hugh & Karen for their continual leadership through Swinley forest. Congratulations to Patrick L & Victoria for completing their LiRF course (run leader), Paul & Katie Ackling, Robin and Rochelle for your commitment in signing up for the LiRF course. The LiRF course is £140 which has been self funded by everyone so far, I would therefore like to share our thanks for this “donation” to the clubs success.
Thanks too to Nick H plus one or two others for providing photos of our clubs activities, if anyone would like to see the photos or contribute our Flickr page is found here…
Thanks also to Katharine for her diligent work in setting up our bank account allowing us to move forward as a club and start taking annual subscription fees. However we felt that the summer months of August were not the right time to ask for club fees, so we are looking at September before we will officially ask for the first club membership fee of £15 PA. With these funds we hope to fulfill further aspirations for the club as well as settle one or two outstanding costs that have already been met by some of your committee.
We are still looking into England Athletics affiliation, however currently we may not meet the criteria for affiliation. One of the criteria is that we should offer coaching facilities, however the England Athletics course to attain coaching qualifications is well over £400. Karen has shown her willingness to progress her run leader to coach, however this would mean her paying out more money from her own pocket to facilitate this need. The run leader course has already cost our volunteers £140 of their money already, just to comply with the legal requirements of being a running club. We are also looking into an idea whereas we can “outsource” a running coach to comply with England Athletics requirements for affiliation.
Affiliation as a club provides us with various resources, including a portal whereas we can easily collect club fees plus a few other facilities, however it looks as though race discounts via affiliation are only possible if runners take personal affiliation at £15 each PA. Club membership could therefore be offered in two forms BTR memberships @ £15 per annum, or BTR membership plus affiliation at £30 (£15 + £15). For those of you that enter races throughout the year the second option may be economically attractive.
Whilst we now have Karen, Hugh, Patrick K, Victoria, and Patrick L as run leaders, with Paul and Katie signed up for imminent courses, and Rochelle and Robin set to follow this trend we still need more run leaders to provide a seamless cover for our runs throughout the year. This would help to share the workload equally so that everyone can continue their personal / family commitments without pressure. Until we can find additional volunteers to become run leaders we may need to cancel runs occasionally, with August being a time where many of us take holidays or spend time with families we have regretfully decided to cancel all runs for this month.
However, there is no reason why you can not schedule your own runs via the Whats App Regular Runners group. These are of course unguided and not covered by Run Together’s liability insurance, and are in essence a group of friends out for a Run. To be added to this group please forward your Whats App mobile number (via our contacts page above). It will then be up to you to schedule your own runs during August, or any other other time should you so wish. I would ask that you keep the messages on this group to a minimum to avoid everyone’s phones continually receiving message alerts!
It had also been decided to split the booking of our Sunday runs into two. You will therefore need to book either the 5k or 10k run. This gives your run leaders advance notice of the numbers for each distance, and may reveal no takers for the 5k on some weeks thus reducing the number of run leaders required. It also gives us the opportunity to cancel one run or the other should we not have enough run leaders to cover both.
We are also looking to add the occasional longer run of 15k, possibly once a month, in place of the 10k. Please feel free to show your interest in the comments below so that we can gauge the uptake for such a run.
Club outings have been discussed many times, and we did discuss a point to point run along the coastal path somewhere, this would take a little organising as we would need to ensure placement of vehicles at the end of the run, I would welcome anyones thoughts or help with this.
Finally Christmas is slowly approaching and we are hoping to make a booking for the Giggling Squid Thai restaurant in Wokingham. This restaurant has been chosen as it is in a central location between Bracknell and Reading, and just a very short walk from Wokingham station. We hope that this choice is the best solution in meeting everyone's preferences, dietary needs and safe travel needs.
Enjoy the summer and the wonderful weather,
Patrick
