Club Contacts

We have updated the contact sheet for 2004 and a copy is included in this Herald. Parents may notice a few committee members doing quite a few jobs ... so if you would like to help out, please get in touch. When we come into the spring / summer season when we organise age-group teams to compete alongside other clubs DO need ALL parents to take a turn in helping out.

The summer fixture list is beginning to fill up and we've now got the dates of the Forth Valley League which caters for younger athletes – U11, U13 and U15 ages groups.

School contact points: We would be particularly appreciative for (younger!) parents to volunteer as the main contact point for any of the local Primary or Secondary schools.

Subscriptions for 2003-2004 First reminder: We're now a few months into our membership year, so if anyone has forgotten to renew their subscription, or has forgotten whether or not they have renewed, we have included a list of those who have renewed in this Herald (as at 31/1/04). So if your name isn't on the list, there should be a membership form with this Herald. As the year progresses we'll list memberships received as a reminder to those who forget the (2nd, 3rd.. ) time of asking.

ALL CLUB MEMBERS FOR THE CURRENT YEAR RECEIVE A 10% DISCOUNT AT "RUN & BECOME"

The list of Spring/summer coaching courses is now available, and as ever, if any parent, or older members, would like to think about considering that all important first step in getting a recognised qualification, then think no more ACT NOW and contact any committee member.

INB ORDER TO FUNCTION AS A YOUTH ORGANISATION WE NEED A MINIMUM NUMBER OF COACHES WITH UK ATHLETICS QUALIFICATIONS

As usual we'll try to spice up the club indoor training with a few different things and maybe some outings:

Visit to Grangemouth Indoor facilities - Sunday 28 March: Slips are being handed out at training for our annual visit to use the indoor facilities at Grangemouth Stadium on Sunday 28th March. Meet at Balerno HS at 1:10. We will be training from 2:00 – 4:00 pm approx. These are the best indoor facilities in Scotland and the new extension is due to be opening before we go along. Parents are also welcome (...actually, required to help with transport and supervision!)

I'm afraid we have to admit that the honours for new club records set in 2003 definitely goes to the boys! Stacey Downie was the only female record breaker in 2003.

* New Club Record

Cross Country Races

The East District League opener was held at Livingston on Saturday 25th October. U17 Shaun Desport was 3rd in 19m 22s just being pipped for 2nd place on the line. New senior Carl Dennis was 223rd in 37m 24s from a field of 240.

Lasswade Open Races were held on Sunday 9th November at Bonnyrigg. Shaun won the U17 race over 3.75 miles in 19m 40s.

The second league races were held at Kirkcaldy on Sunday 30th November. Shaun finished 2nd in 24m 13s gaining revenge over the athlete who beat him at Livingston. Philip Purves was 6th junior in the senior men's race finishing 75th overall out of 177 runners in 38m 43s.

(or "Lightning strikes twice")

The 135th Edinburgh New Year Spring meeting (formerly known as the Powderhall sprint) took place on the 28th Dec with the final of the BIG race, the 110m handicap, held over to 7 January due to the severs weather conditions. These days the meeting is held on the racecourse at Musselburgh, and on the 28th Dec, to use the horse racing description, the "going" was rather hard due to a very severe frost! These races are held under "professional" (Scottish Games Association) rules which means that all runners are given a distance handicap according to how fast they have been over similar races – slower runners get a bigger handicap so they have less far to run. The skill of the handicapper is to get everyone in a race finishing almost together, and making sure that no "unknown" runners win!

Several members took part. Dimitri Levitin, making his "professional" debut was given a severe handicap in both sprint races and failed to qualify for the later rounds. Stacey Downie, who won three times in the Games circuit in 2003 and Beatrice McCorkell both ran well and were to the fore in their heats of the 110m but just missed qualification. Beatrice won her heat in the 90m and had she qualified from the semi final, she would have been up against bionic-knee-man, Bob Douglas in the 90m final...

... Bob won his heat of the 90m (Veteran section) and progressed to the Veteran's final (which also counted as a semi-final for the overall 90m competition). In the Vet final Bob was giving 73-year-old Jimmy Bryce (Dunf & W Fife) a 6m start, and caught him at the line, but the photo finish showed Jimmy had just held on to win by 1/100th of a second (with the rest of the field well back). Never mind (!!), both went through to the overall final, where in a carbon copy of their earlier race Bob again caught Jimmy at the line, and again the photo finish showed Jimmy had just held on to win by 1/100th of a second with the rest of the field (of much younger runners!) not that far behind.

Postscript: Jimmy Bryce won the Powderhall Sprint in 1954 and with this being the 50th anniversary of that win, he had been training "harder than for many years" to go for it again, but breathing problems the previous week had persuaded him to opt for the shorter 90m race.

Junior Indoor Relays - 15 Feb

We entered an Under 17 Girls team of Emma Mitchell, Karen Milligan, Claire Carmichael (still an U15) and Robyn Addinal for the 4 x 200m Scottish Indoor Relay Championships at the Kelvin Hall on Sunday 15 Feb. Kirsty Dewar travelled as a reserve, and it's just as well she did! Karen was already carrying a toe injury sustained from hockey when she had a "disagreement with a door" that someone opened at the wrong moment and she had to withdraw from the team. The girls put in a useful run to finish in under 2 minutes, but didn't make it to the final five.

--------------------------------------------------------------Adverts-----------------------------------------------------------------------

New Running shop in Edinburgh: It looks like there will be a new running shop in Edinburgh opening in March. Of particular interest to older (teenage) members or students is that they have recently advertised for full-time, and part-time (weekend) staff. If anyone is interested contact pleasesend your CV and covering letter   by post clearly marked ‘Run-4-it’ to: Genny Kutarski, Personnel Manager, 41 Commercial Street, Leith, Edinburgh, EH6 6JD