January 2020: Chairman’s Update

Happy New Year to all!

Here’s a brief summary of the AGM, held in November:

It was confirmed that we have 161 members, which is excellent.

There have been a few changes in personnel at club director level, the main one being our previous chairman, Alan Pritchard, leaving and me, Martin Shortall, taking on the role. Ann Schwarzenbach was elected as secretary and Andy Parker has replaced Ann as membership secretary. Our current president, Dave Nason, confirmed he was stepping down as he and his wife are moving out of the area. Dave was the last of the original members and will be dearly missed. He doesn’t like a fuss, so I will just say, on behalf of the club, a big ‘thank you’. Chris Cox will take up the position of president and Cliff Cartwright will become vice president. Finally, I want to share our thanks to our current committee, without whom we could not run the club, and a welcome to Jon Wolfe, Jo Palmer, Maria Brown and Marian Lowther. The majority of the new committee members, together with others, run the ‘Comms Team’, which continues to do a fantastic job.

The results of the club competitions were confirmed and winners’ trophies will be handed over at the presentation night, Friday 17th January. Well done to everyone.

It has been agreed by the committee that the club should join the Burton & District League for the 2020 season, in order to add variety to the coming year.  This in turn will change our Grand Prix (GP) events, leaving out some popular local races, and introducing some new ones. The full list of GP League races, as shared at the AGM, is now published on the website. As a result of feedback about the changes, we have revisited the list and tried to fit in a couple of the popular local races. Aldridge 10km was added, but it was decided not to include Lichfield Half as it is only one week after another half marathon at Uttoxeter. This does not stop anyone from entering the Lichfield Half, which we know is very popular.

Moving on from this, we also added league tables for members to assist in running and providing friendly competition against our peers. It will be interesting to see how this performs this year. We will increase from 4 to 5 leagues to tighten the ability of the runners into smaller time gaps. More information will be shared on this by Jon Wolfe.

We had a full update from Cass and the 10km Race Team Crew, as the race grows in popularity every year and provides invaluable income and good press for our relatively small club. A big ‘thank you’ goes to Cass and the team for all their hard work.

Due to the increase in England Athletics subscriptions, which form 50% of your actual club membership payments, it was voted to increase our subs for all members by £5.00, which means that 2020 subs will be £35.00. This will be payable by end February.

The Monday run, which has been starting from Saxon Hill, will return to its starting point of Morrison’s car park in Lichfield in due course, as numbers have not increased as a result of the change.

Finally, a Lichfield 5km parkrun will start in January. Although the club doesn’t manage this event, we may occasionally ask for volunteers so please help if you can.

Martin Shortall