With the summer holidays if full swing and, at the time of writing, still no sign of "summer" arriving, we are suddenly three-quarters of the way through our summer Track and Field season. With an average of one team a week being organised since mid-April, it hss been a busy time for the coaches, team managers and officials. The results are, like the weather, trickling in, and we have included an up-to-date position in all competitions in this Herald.

With only a few fixtures left it's worth a few reminders:

Saturday 3 August: Forth Valley League at Pitreavie: Hopefully most of the younger members will be back, suitably refreshed after a summer break. The final FVL meeting is the daytime meeting at Pitreavie when the clubs from Divisions One and Two are all together and we have a bigger programme of events than is possible on a Thursday evening. Although we have successfully avoided promotion to Division One, we would like to see a good turnout from the club's younger members to show everyone what we're capable of!

Sunday 11th August: Monklands Cup, Coatbridge: This is the "Scottish Cup" for Girls and Ladies. With fewer clubs competing over the last couple years there is no need for a qualifying round, so this is effectively the Scottish Cup Final! The format of the competition is that each age group has its own competition. We have entered three teams – Under 13G, Under 15G and Senior Women (in which U17's can compete). The format is one competitor per club event, but there is a full programme of events. The programme & times have not yet been issued, but when we entered 2 teams a couple of years ago the events were:

U13G: 80m 150m 800m 1200m 70mH, Shot Putt, Long Jump & 4 x 100 relay

U15G: 100m 200m 800m 1500m 75mH, Shot Putt, Long Jump, High Jump & 4 x 100m relay

Sunday 11th August: Men's League at Inverness: The last couple of years when we have travelled to Inverness it has been a major logistical exercise organising transport, accommodation and Saturday evening socialising. We may be stretched to field a reasonable team this year, but hope that sufficient numbers are willing to travel to make it a good weekend.

Sunday 8 September CSSL, Scotstoun: This is the League which covers ALL age groups from U11 to over 40, and we frequently find some talented parent or brother who has made their debut in this competition. All parents should consider themselves on standby if your son or daughter is selected!

If you and your friends are beginning to run out of ideas towards the end of the holidays, then why not come along to the Startrack activity week which will take place in the last week of the holidays: Monday 12th August to Friday 16th August. Details on the activity week were contained in the "play4it" and "go4it" booklets issued to all the City of Edinburgh Council schools. The cost of the activity week is £10 and attendees will receive a Goody Bag, Startrack T-shirt, cap and certificate.

Details:

Primary: (P4 – P7): 10.00am – 12.00 noon phone 550 6818
Secondary: (S1 – S4): 1.00pm – 3.00pm Phone 550 6824

(Information is also available from Balerno & Currie High Schools)

With the club coaches occupied in their normal day jobs (yes, we all have full-time jobs!), we have relied on Ewen Cameron, the Athletics Development Officer for Edinburgh, to organise the coaches and helpers. We hope that some of us will be able to take some time off work to help out. If any parents, or older members (U20, Seniors) are free during the day that week and would be willing to help please get in touch with Bob (449 6105) or Ewen Cameron (0131-529-7961 daytime)

Training resumes at Balerno High School on Monday 19th August, ie the first week back at school (yuck!). There may be some nights during the summer holidays when Norma or Monika will take a small group. All other members should check with their coaches for local arrangements.

We have a large supply of club T-shirts which we would prefer to see being worn rather that sitting in a garage, so we have decided that:

Paid up members who are primarily road runners (rather than Track and Field competitors) will receive a free T-shirt this year.

For everyone else we are dropping the price to £5.00. Please contact Norma or Bob if you would like to order one.

We need to put in an order for club vests (£12 each), so if any one would like to order one, or a crop top (girls) contact Norma 0131 449 6020.

Most readers should now be aware that the Commonwealth Games are being held in Manchester. As part of the build up to the Games a the Queens Jubilee Baton has travelled around the Commonwealth. In the two months preceding the Games it has been carried around the UK by relays of thousands of runners through hundreds of towns and villages. Bob Douglas was one of the carriers when the baton passed through the Lothians. Here he tells what it was like.

"I was one of the runner chosen for day 7 of the Jubilee Baton Relay when it would travel from Stirling > Dunfermline > Forth Bridge > Midlothian > Borders and back up to Edinburgh for a celebration in Princes St Gardens. I was one of a relay of six runners carrying it through Penicuik. The amount of organisation behind the scenes was incredible. We assembled at the designated location where we boarded a special runners "drop-off" bus where we were given instructions on our particular leg of the run and how to carry the baton. It weighs about 1 Kilogram and we had to hold it upright. Passing the baton from one runner to another was NOT to be done at speed! The receiving runner has to put one hand on the bottom of the handle where a pulse detector picks up the runner's heartbeat. This would start a pulsing light in the top of the baton.

The club usually holds its AGM on the Monday or Tuesday in the final week of September. We have still to organise the venue and date, but please make a note now and be prepared to come along when the details are announced. As ever, we would welcome some new faces, especially to help co-ordinate activities for the younger members. This is your chance to keep a community club at the forefront of the sport in Scotland. You will have a chance to work with some great kids, be a part of some memorable performances and help us nurture some future champions.

After eighteen years of service to the club, Betty Gibb will be retiring from coaching later this year. Betty has provided tremendous service to the club as a coach, latterly to the older juniors and seniors. She has also been the team manager for our Senior Men's team. She will be greatly missed.

We have reviewed our coaching needs and will announce the details after the resumption of. Our intentions are:

Bob to take over Betty's group.

The older youngster forming a new intermediate youth group training one night a week at Saughton with Monika (but alongside the seniors members)

A rota of senior / special event coaches to take regular sessions. This will take a bit of organising, and as some of the coaches we aim to approach are semi-professional we have applied for funding to pay expenses.

We haven't yet decided when these new arrangements will start, so after the summer holidays we will start as usual.

To maintain the viability of our coaching capability we need a steady stream of new helpers, and experienced helpers getting an entry level coaching qualification. The club depends on the support that all parents can provide for members.

Those of you who are registered with Athletics Scotland should turn to page 7 of the latest edition of PB magazine (Summer 2002) where we get a mention.

For established joggers there is still the regular Sunday morning run: Meet at Balerno High School Car Park at 10.00 am prompt.

The Sunday morning brigade are organising a social run on Sunday 1st September (provisional date) from Balerno over the hill to the Flotterstone Inn, (the "Flot Trot") followed, weather permitting by a barbecue. Come along and join in.

Four of the "girls" made their international debut with a trip over to the Dublin ladies mini-marathon, a very sociable charity 10k run which had in the region of over 40,000 runners. With that size of a field, the chances of them being in the picture which appeared in the Dublin Evening Herald were pretty slim, but there they were.

We eventually had three teams competing in the Junior relay Championships on a very wet day in Glasgow. Although the U15 girls didn't make it to the final, it was a young team (Claire is still an U13), and all four will be in the U15 age group next year. The U15 boys, again a relatively young squad with three first year U15's, did extremely well to get to the final, with two very fast times. They took over three seconds off the time that three of the squad ran as U13's last summer. The same rate of progress should deliver a medal next year. After finishing second in their heat, the U13 boys including one who is still U11 (Roddy McLeod), thought they had blown it in the final. They finished the race in fourth place, and thought they had been disqualified, so they left for home. When the official result came out, we found it was one of the other clubs who was disqualified, and we were now third. Luckily (a rather wet) team manager was still around to collect the medals and forward them to the boys.

U15 Girls: (Robyn Addinal, Claire Carmichael, Emma Mitchell, Karen Milligan) 56.75s
U15 Boys: (Kerr Archibald, Neil Campbell, Tommy Ashby, George McCorkell) 51.03s (H4) 50.76 (F7)
U13 Boys: (Fergus McCorkall, Roddy McLeod, Glyn Desport, Finlay Anderson) 56.84s (H2) 56.68 (F3)

We believe that Roddy could be the youngest club member to win a Scottish Championship medal as there are no Scottish Championships for U11's! A copy of the 1-2-3 in all the relays is attached. You see that a few large clubs dominated proceedings and we did well to appear in such distinguished company.

There were several outstanding performances at the East District Championships in early May. Pride of place goes to Paul McDougall with 2 silvers (1500m and 800m). Paul broke 2 minutes in the 800m for a pb and new club record and we also saw Sean Desport setting a pb coming fourth in the same race. Stacey Downie had the frustration of two fourth place finishes, but as a first year U17 she is looking forward to improving on these places next year. Glyn Desport won the Long Jump with a jump of 4m44 that just missed the club record by 1 cm, but he rectified that a couple of weeks later. Results (available on the web site)

Match 2: Pitreavie, Thursday 23^rd May

The match result seems a little disappointing but in actual fact there were many fine performances. Unfortunately on the night several athletes could not attend for various other commitments and so we really suffered by not having many relay teams which resulted in a big loss of points. However well done to those who competed!

It was a beautiful night for once for athletics at Livingston!! Harmeny were convening this meeting. The good weather encouraged some fine performances from the athletes. Particularly well done to Vicki and Roddy who were the sole representatives for their age groups. They competed admirably in all three events! Thanks to Bob and Karin for helping out in the box and to the other transport helpers!

Notes

* The results for the Sen and Vet Women 800m (combined race) "disappeared". We pointed out to the League management that this race did indeed take place. The points have now been included in the updated results!

** Veterans competing in Senior events.

We had a few seniors making their debuts, and they turned in some star performances! Dorothy Smith won the Vet Women 200 (indeed she was the only Vet..) but defeated one of the seniors in her race. Innes Campos, who comes from Chile and is in Scotland with her family for a year, was second in the Senior Women Javelin, and had a useful 200m sprint. Russell Anderson ran the Vet men 1500m and was soon well out of sight of the auther (quite literally!) who was relieved at being able to plod along as the B-string runner. Jings, he nearly lapped me!! We also had the sight of Kristin Lownie and Gillian Kerr having a chat as they ran side by side to win the 3000m race, well clear of the only other runner.

We haven't got the detailed checked results yet, but the unofficial result is: 1 Livingston 1015; 2 Airdrie Harriers 1013; 3 Victoria Pk 990.5; 4 Harmeny 814.5; 5 Fife 737; 6 Perth Strathtay 694; 7 Greenock Glenpark 369

Boys Result: 1 Pitreavie 412; 2 Shettleston 367; 3 Clydesdale 287; 4 Kirkintilloch 235; 5 Fife 207; 6 Perth 162; 7 Lasswade 150; 8 Harmeny 112; 9 Stewartry 9

Boys Result: 1 CoE 425; 2 Shettleston 370; 3 Fife 275; 4 Inverclyde 248; 5 Central 213; 6 Nithsdale 190; 7 Harmeny 188; 8 Irvine 38

Girls Result: 1 Cof Glasgow 349; 2 Central 288; 3 CoE 259; 4 Nithsdale 198; 5 Fife 160; 6 Inverclyde 143; 7 Harmeny 138; 8 Irvine 77

Congratulations to Marbeth Shiell who was again been selected to represent Scotland in the Teenager Black Forest Games, held annually in Germany. I've finally lost count of the number of times Marbeth has been abroad on "Scottish" business!

Marbeth was 4th in the 800m trail race (2m47.8), 6th in the 2.5k hill race. In the 3 x 800 relay the Scottish team came 2nd, one second ahead of England.

Updated Result: 1 Cumbernauld 188; 2 Victoria Park 181; 3 Giffnock North 152; 4 Clydesdale 109; 5 Dunfermline & W Fife 88; 6 Harmeny 53.

Because there are now only six clubs in the League the scoring system is:

A: 12,10,8,6,5,4
B: 8,6,4,3,2,1

which means that the points totals for all the clubs are much lower than would have been the case in previous years when the scoring was based on an eight team league.

We had a much better performance overall in the second match, in a much more competitive meeting. In a complete reversal from recent years when we've had a powerful sprint squad and no distance runners, we've now recruited several distance runners, but have lost several sprinters due to injury, retirals, job moves and domestic demands. We had five athletes making their Men's League debut for the club at Grangemouth: Philip Purves in the 800m & 1500m Aaron Simpson in the 800 & 5000m, David Gibson in the 1500m, Alastair Dewar in the sprints & LJ and Scott Nicholson in the High Jump. With Tony Westbury competing in the Steeplechase before retiring ill in the 5K, we had the largest middle distance team for many years. Next year we will be an even stronger middle distance club, we now need some sprinters back from injury etc!

Philip maintained a unique family tradition, following in the footsteps of older brothers Andrew and Ian who have also run in the Men's League for us (and all have done an 800m).

Result: 1 Clydesdale 222; 2 Victoria Park 195; 3 Cumbernauld 175; 4 Giffnock North 151; 5 Harmeny 95; 6 Dunf & W.Fife 77

For Junior members we have enclosed a copy of the entry form for the Young Athletes meeting at Pitreavie being held on Sunday 1st September. This is open to all U11, U13 U15 and U17 junior members. We would strongly encourage members to enter. You can choose your preferred events from the programme.