Chairman's Chat

Hello everyone and welcome to the first Chairman's Chat of 2019. The two months of 2019 has flown by (I won't dwell on Doynton but wasn't it wonderful!) and Rodway is just around the corner. But here's what I want to focus on, YOU!

Heading into the AGM, we only had volunteers for five of the ten committee positions. We, the committee, could not have maintained or improved the standards of the club with this number. Thankfully, a further four volunteers stepped up at the AGM and the final position was filled in the pub post-meeting. In less than twelve months' time, we will head into another AGM and I hope that we have a little more interest on being on committee for 2020. I'll ask you all to consider taking a turn on committee in due course and if you have any questions about what might be involved, please ask anyone listed here: EGRC committee or drop me an email at: info@emersonsgreenrunningclub.co.uk.   

Although we have a number of Run Leaders in the Club, more would be useful. Being a Run Leader doesn't mean that you necessarily have to look after a Club Night or even lead a run (of course there are opportunities to do so if you wish) but it does mean that we can potentially offer more options on club nights, more routes and a greater supervision of runners. To become a Run Leader, one only has to participate in a one day course hosted by England Athletics and 50% of the course cost will be covered by Emersons Green Running Club. And once you are a Run Leader, we'd love you to consider becoming a Running Coach. Currently, EGRC only has one (me). The Running Coach course is more detailed, involves training and assessment days and coursework but again, the club will happily cover 50% of the course fee. Let me know if I can provide more information.

Pete (Doynton) and Ashley (Rodway) won't be organisers of their respective races forever. In due course (and I don't know at the point of writing whether this means next year or in ten years' time) we will need volunteers from the membership to step up and step into the organiser roles. And in due course, both I'm sure would be delighted to impart their knowledge to you and have you shadow them (or they might shadow you) with a view to you taking over. In addition we would love to add a third race to our portfolio. If you don't have ideas about when, where and what this might be, we do. As always, tap someone on the shoulder or email to find out more.

In 2018 a number of club members got together and discussed the idea of creating EGRC Juniors, an arm of the club looking after Under 18s. After a couple of meetings and several emails, we circulated a questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire, even amongst the relatively small pool, suggested that there was enough interest for us to take the next steps and begin work towards making EGRC Juniors a reality. But then Christmas and Doynton took over and EGRC Juniors was put on the back burner. We now want to pick this up again. Although we have a number of people willing to assist in this project, we lack a leader, someone who will pull everything and everyone together and probably, ultimately lead the EGRC Junior volunteers. Could this be you?

Please, with respect to all the opportunities above, don't just assume that someone else will put their hand up and volunteer. We really do need you!

PS: Please renew your membership. 😊

Happy Running!

Neil Newman

Chairman

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