Thank you. Thank you very much.

Changes at the top

Paul Hawkins, Chairman, Stratford AC 

23 July 2024

As you’ll have heard at the recent AGM two of our leading club officials are stepping down after long service to the club. 

On behalf of the Executive Board, I would like to thank Mark Bullock for his many years of service as our Treasurer and completing our club accounts each year. A role that he took on in succession to Malcolm Higham and then Paul Davies.

This was a role that Mark found increasingly time consuming particularly over the past couple of years due to his own work commitments, hence him resigning from the post of Treasurer a few months ago.

We are extremely grateful for his support over the years and the many hours of voluntary time that he has given to support both me in my role and the club’s finances.

During my time as Chairman of the West Midland Young Athletes League, Mark also supported me there as the League treasurer implementing much needed updates to the league’s processes for which I will always be very grateful. 

We signed Tony Jackson on a free transfer from Leamington in 1997 in a complicated deal. It took almost a year before he was cleared to compete for us. Those were in the days before club transfers in athletics were simplified. Tony soon made his way in our club, joining the committee in 2003. He was Newsletter editor from 2004 to 2010 and Summer 6 Race Director from 2006. In 2010.

Tony became Club Secretary following the legendary Ashley Sherren and there he remained until now.

Personally I never thought he would resign but it looks as if he has got away at last.

Unfortunately neither Mark nor Tony were able to attend the AGM in person but we’ll be making a presentation to both of them as soon as we can but in the meantime I’m pleased to say that we have made them both Life members of Stratford upon Avon AC.

At the other end of the longevity scale Vicky Sharpe is leaving her role as Women’s cross country team manager. Vicky took this position when I took a leave of absence in 2020 and brought tremendous enthusiasm and leadership to the post but unfortunately suffered a serious injury which meant she wasn’t able to compete herself in the second season and ultimately had to resign.

Aquathlons

Report – Kate Marshall

Charly (19 -Juniors) and Amélie Marshall (11 – Tristar 2) were in action again this weekend.

University of Worcester was host to the National Super Series Aquathlons and a simultaneous  regional Tristar event. This is a multi-event format with the youth and junior elite athletes completing three aquathlons with a short interval in between.

The swim distance decreases as the run portion increases in the consecutive races. Performance in all three events count towards the overall position to test both endurance and racecraft. The tristars completed two equidistant aquathlons.

Starting off was an 800m swim and 1km run. Charly came out of the swim in the second pack and after a slippery transition managed to run herself into 3rd position. She was happy with this solid first performance. 

Next was the 500m swim and 2km run. Again appearing out of the water with the second pack, this time however with a slick transition Charly then chased down the competition over the longer run to come home in first place. 

During Charly’s break, Amélie completed her first event; a 300m swim and 1km run. Amélie had a strong swim drafting around in 5th place and held this for her run. 

Quickly it was back to Charly for her final aquathlon. Now the pressure was on as she was ‘the target to beat’. Not phased by a similar placing in the 300m swim, and knowing an even longer run (3km) gave her ample opportunity to catch the leading athletes. 

Charly finished in first place again, guaranteeing the win and the maximum 2500 points for this event.

This result together with last week’s triathlon at Mallory Park should catapult Charly up the Super Series rankings. She is pleased to see her winter training paying off and feels fully recovered after her injury setback earlier in the season. 

Within moments of Charly finishing the weather turned but heavy rain doesn’t make much difference when you are swimming in a lake.

Amélie posted a similar performance again finishing in 5th place confirming her strengths in the swim/run part of triathlon. 

Draycote Water Running Festival
 

Report – James Lake

Setting the scene: it’s Friday 19th. I’m staring out the window, wishing I was outside soaking up the sun instead of stuck in my office churning out spreadsheets. What better a time to have a Google for some weekend races? When I found a 10k over at Draycote Water for the following day it didn’t take much convincing for me to sign up. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Draycote, it’s a reservoir over towards Rugby that plays host to a variety of events.

Coincidentally, I’d been there for a work charity event last winter, dragon boat racing – I don’t think I’ve ever been as cold as I was rowing in the rain and wind that day!

In complete contrast, after a few strides and a group warm up, I was sweating before we’d even crossed the start line.

I’d never broken sub-40 for a 10k, and as such had planned to pace for around 39 minutes to give myself a comfortable buffer, but the weather enforced a change of strategy: stick with the 40 minute pacer and push at the end if I had anything left to give. 

Three distance options were available, all following the border of the reservoir, with varying numbers of laps and extra bits to make up the respective distances. The 10k I was doing comprised of an out-and-back followed by one complete lap of the water.

The first 3k absolutely flew by. Legs didn’t take long to warm up and I quickly settled into a nice group of 6 or 7 around the pacer. Apart from one small sharp hill it was very flat until about 6k, where we started to lose runners from the pace group one by one. The long flat straight stretches along the reservoir walls switched to a twisty tree-lined undulating path – and these little hills proved to be an absolute killer on my legs. They’d only be very short sections of uphill, but significantly steep to stop you from getting into any real rhythm.

It wasn’t long until our group was reduced to just me and the pacer. (That’s not to say we were winning the race – plenty of people went ahead of us at the start and we never saw them again!)

For the last few kilometres, we started breaking the distance down into track laps. Sounds stupid but it did seem to help me keep pushing to the end.

As far as I can recall, for the first time ever, I went for the sprint finish a bit early – didn’t quite embarrass myself though, thankfully, I realised and backed off before a second sprint used the last 1% of my energy to drag myself over the line in a chip time of 39:43 and 12th place overall. Mission achieved! 

Congratulations to the other SuAAC runners, of which I could spot two in the results:

• James Cottriall 36:26 (2nd place overall)
• Hannah Stockil 58:57