How to Renew Your Membership

If you haven’t already renewed your Bedford and County membership, you can do that now at a reduced rate.

Given the unusual circumstances this year, the club committee has decided on a 2 stage approach:

• Stage 1 is to ask now for renewal to the club at a reduced flat rate for the year, including EA (England Athletics) membership.
• Stage 2 would come later in the year when social distancing restrictions are relaxed, with the option of renewing the stadium pass with Fusion. We will not ask for anything further for the club element at that time and will be expecting Fusion to offer a discounted cost.

Bedford and County AC’s Senior Men finished in fourth spot in the Virtual National Road Relays, and the club’s Age Graded team finished one place higher to take third.

The ingenious virtual road relays were the brainchild of club member, Massi Dendani, who tweeted the main distance-running coach at rivals Tonbridge AC to see if they wanted to go head-to-head.  Things then snowballed – over 5000 runners across the UK entered, with around 130 men’s teams and 125 women’s teams taking part.

The virtual relays were fully compliant with social distancing regulations.  Each leg had to be run solo between Saturday 4th April and Wednesday 8th April.  Competitors were told not to drive anywhere to run, and were instructed to avoid busy places and park run routes.  Nearly all runners these days have GPS running watches made by the likes of Garmin and Tom Tom.  Each athlete had to find their own 5 kilometre course close to home, record their leg on their watch, upload it to the popular Strava or Garmin websites, and send a link to the organizers via the Open Track athletics website, which collated the results.  There were even time penalties for significant negative elevation (defined as 30 feet or more in the course of the leg).  The virtual relays also raised over £9,000 for NHS staff and volunteers caring for Covid-19 patients, as competitors supported linked JustGiving appeal in aid of the Association of NHS Charities.

The Bedford and County Men’s A team finished fourth with a collective time of 2:58.45, narrowly missing out by only ten seconds to rivals Tonbridge, who took third place.  The scorers were in finishing order: Daniel Jarvis (4th), Matt Leach (25th), Aaron Scott (31st), John Eves (57th), Darren Deed (91st), Ben Alcock (98th), Alfred Yabsley (116th), Ben Davies (119th), Jack Goodwin (127th), Ed Blythman (169th), Andrew Headley (176th), and William Mullins (232nd).

The Men’s B team finished a respectable 38th, recording 3:17:56.  The scorers were: Paul Mizon (239th), Harry Brodie (260th), Matt Bray (277th), James Minter (412th), Michael Harrison (471st), Will Mackay (491st), Craig Emmerson (634th), Charlie Palmer (685th), Richard Laursen (753rd), Jamie Webster (1025th), Erwan Weber (1047th), and Ewan Wilson (1306th).

The Women’s A team finished in 15th spot in the six to score competition with an overall time of 1:53:29: The scorers were Rebecca Murray (702nd), Alice Burgin (1552nd), Sue Bosher (1831st), Natasha Peters-Cooper (1900th), Ellie Still (1976th), and Tia Wilson (2286th).

The virtual nature of the event also encouraged the organizers innovate by calculating the clubs with the best age-graded team.  Age grading works by allocating a percentage score to each athlete based on how close their performance is to the world-best for their age.  On this measure, Bedford and County AC finished third – the age graded team had an average of 88.43%.  The scorers were Daniel Jarvis, Darren Deed, John Eves, Aaron Scott, Matt Leach, Rebecca Murray, Ben Alcock, Alfred Yabsley, Ben Davies,  Jack Goodwin,  Ed Blythman, and Andrew Headley.

Dan Jarvis was the top-ranked individual Bedford athlete, finishing fourth fastest overall with a wonderful time of 13:47, and an age grading of 94.2 %.  Rebecca Murray was the 10th fastest Senior Woman in 16:43.  Matt Leach (25th fastest in 14:28), and Aaron Scott (29th fastest in 14:33) also made the overall top 50.Other notable individual performance included:

• John Eves (14:44)- 5thin the M35 category.
• Darren Deed (14:58) - 2ndin the M40 category.
• Alfred Yabsley (15:03), Ed Blythman (15:16), Harry Brodie (15:33) and James Minter (16:00) came 13th, 20thand 26th and 43rd respectively in the M20 category.
• Charlie Palmer (16:42) came 50thin the M40 category.
• Sue Bosher (19:08) was the 18th fastest W35.
• Tia Wilson (20:18) was the 20thUnder 20 woman.

The virtual relays enabled competitive sport to blossom, raised money for the indispensable NHS, and fully complied with all social distancing regulations.

Following in Sir Roger’s Footsteps – The BMC Bannister Virtual Mile Time Trial
On 6th May 1954, running at Oxford’s Iffley Road track, Sir Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, a feat which many at the time thought impossible. In the years that followed, British middle distance running experienced a fallow period, and the production line of great milers ground to a halt. In 1963, the renowned coach, Frank Horwill, set up the British Milers Club, which aimed to promote middle distance running in this country through a network of coaches and elite races. The ‘BMC’ bore spectacular fruit in the late 1970s and 80s, as first Steve Ovett, then Seb Coe, Steve Cram, Peter Elliot and others dominated international middle distance running. Over a seven year period starting in 1978, three different Brits set mile world records and won European, World or Olympic titles over 1500m.

Licenced Competition Suspended until at Least 30th June 2020

In response to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, England Athletics have extended the suspension of all licenced competition until at least 30th June 2020. This means that all club competitions, including leagues, championships and open meetings due to take place up to that date have been cancelled. Additionally, the English Schools Athletics Association cancelled the 2020 English Schools Championships some weeks ago.

All other collective athletic activity, including group training, remains suspended until at least the end of May. England Athletics say that they are likely to review this again during the week commencing 4th May.

However, the suspension of competition does not seem to apply to unlicensed virtual time trials, so long as these comply with social distancing rules. In fact, England Athletics have recently provided free access to the virtual running platforms OpenTrack and Racefully for all member clubs. A number of virtual races that club members may want to investigate are now popping up on OpenTrack (https://opentrack.run/product/virtual-racing.html).

Please see https://www.englandathletics.org/athletics-and-running/news/statement-suspension-of-competitions-extended-u20-u23-champs-postponed/ for the full England Athletics statement on the suspension of competitions.

We are extremely sad to hear of the passing of Peter Radcliffe, former chairman of Bedford and County AC who through his dedication and hard work helped many people within the club and wider athletics community. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time.

Unfortunately, in light of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, there have been further cancellations of events beyond the official suspension of athletics competition (currently set at 30th June).

The cancellations are:

• The last remaining Southern Athletics League matches of the 2020 season - in July and August - have now been cancelled.  Sadly, this means that there will be no Southern Athletics League matches this year.  
• All Eastern Masters Athletics Club (EMAC) League matches, including the September Final at Bedford.
• The British Masters Athletics Championships that were due to take place at Bedford in mid-August.
• The July National Athletics League match.

In more positive news:
• The August and September EMAC League dates are being held for open meetings, should circumstances allow.
• A number of virtual races are taking place in June (see the article about upcoming virtual races in June 2020 for more information.)

In addition to the fixtures metioned previously, the fixtures below have also been cancelled. We will update this section with the latest fixture cancellations due to Coronavirus when we get them.

• Southern Athletics League match on 7th June has been cancelled.  
• The English Schools Championships, which was scheduled for 11th and 12th July has been cancelled, ESAAstatement.

It Isn’t All About Cancellations

For anybody wanting ideas about what to do, the England Athletics, Athletics @ Home website is worth a look: https://www.englandathletics.org/about-us/athletics-at-home/