Captain's Corner

Hello EGRC!

Your Captains here! With the monthly run-down of what’s been occuring in our lovely club. Wow, can you believe we’ve been locked down for a quarter of a year now!? Incredible. A good excuse to kick off the trainers and don the onesie you’d think? But not us at EGRC! For we have been keeping ourselves entertained, motivated and inspired to run through a variety of fabulous games and challenges.
 
Firstly, let us invite you to cast your minds back to what feels like a very long time ago. January. At the dawn of a new decade, we embarked on a selection of up to 15 epic races of varying distance and challenge – aka the EGRC Club Championship 2020. January saw us Rollicking along a Riverbank near Thornbury, and running the rollercoaster of Slaughterford. February saw us dancing with lions at Longleat and March saw a hardy few scattered like little acorns on the wind to all four corners of outer Bristol, making some of us Green with envy, and others Green with nausea. Then – boom! The pandemic struck, the lockdown commenced and our Club Champ races started falling like, well, acorns on an oak tree. With the Club Champs hanging in tatters - 4 races cancelled, 3 postponed, the rest hanging in the balance – it was time to decide whether or not to call time on the champs for this year.
 
Hopefully however, you have all seen our EGRC Captains email from the 1st July in which we confirm our refusal to give up on our beloved Club Champs and our plan for it’s resurrection. This involves removing 3 races from the list, keeping the outstanding races on the list if they do go ahead, and replacing those that do get cancelled with an epic solo run of a similar distance. We are therefore proud to announce the new EGRC Club Champs 2020. Behold! in all it’s glory!: www.emersonsgreenrunningclub.co.uk/championships/
 
We hope that this solution allows everyone to participate in the Champs if they wish, maintains the integrity and challenge of the Champs, and most importantly allows members to run and stay safe. The results are now in from the first of our replacement races – the Pomphrey Parkrun 5k. Well done to all who took part. We hope you enjoy the rest!
 
Now to our fabulous games! The start of June saw the conclusion of Jack's EGRC Route Pursuit which kept us entertained in the last half of May. This saw nearly 50 members getting out and about to run one of various routes on any given day to get points, the further from Pomphrey Hill - the more the points. It was great to get out and try some lovely new routes. If that wasn’t incentive enough then dangling the carrot of a bottle of wine probably was! The greater the points tally, the greater the number of draw entries for a bottle of plonk / box of choccies. Well done to all for taking part. With a special mention to Nicola Tanner, the lovely Burges & Laura Gilbert, for achieving the dizzy heights of 50 points and 4 draw entries, and Helen Spilsbury and John Walsh for getting into the 40’s as well. Their love of a new running route – or a bottle of wine – is second to none. We’ll leave you to decide which   Well done also to our very own Ian - The Mussile - Mussell, our prize draw winner. With half the points and twice the luck, he shows us that you just have to be in it to win it   Thank you to Jack & Em for organising this fabulous event. Your prize draw was also nearly as entertaining as the challenge itself!   If you enjoyed this challenge, or blinked and missed it – check out the #TeamEGRC Facebook page for Route Pursuit v2 which has already kicked off.
 
The first half of June saw the EGRC Treasure Hunt, laid on by our very own Chairman. The mission: to guess the mystery location. A different loco was on offer every day with the first person to correctly guess the loco each day winning a bottle of wine. Types of loco have ranged from bridges, farms & forests, to schools, parks, chippies and pubs. Needless to say, members weren’t short of offerings of pubs! The initial letter from each loco formed an anagram of the name of a famous person who, randomly in the past, has been the recipient of our Chairman’s generosity in the form of a can of diet coke! Well done to Hayley Franklin for guessing said-recipient, seven letters in, as one Paul Gascoigne! Hip hip – Howay!
 
The second half of June has seen the EGRC Ross Barkley Challenge cooked up by our aforementioned Mr Mussell. The mission: to run 5k as fast as possible within a period of 1 hour, stopping and starting your watch as you please. Prizes for the fastest time, most creative method, worst post-selfie and PB lottery draw were on offer. By most accounts this challenge was a lot tougher than initially met the eye! Some very inventive strategies were deployed resulting in some insanely quick ‘PB’ times. At least we all have a time to aim for now next time we do parkrun! Well done to everyone that took part and of course to Ian for organising this fabulous mad-cap caper. Keep an eye on the #TeamFacebook page for the results.
 
Finally, a huge thanks to Steven & his Queen B (73) Anne Burge, for providing us with a time for fun (41) over these past weeks vis-a-vie EGRC Bingo. Man alive! (No. 5) what are we going to do without our two little ducks (22) from now on? That didn’t take any googling, honest! A huge thanks also to Danny, our Quizmaster extraordinaire, for keeping us all entertained with his inventive and educational quizzes over these past weeks. You’ve certainly added a bit more colour to our Monday & Thursday nights. The opportunity for members to see each other, especially in the early uncertain days of lock-down was priceless. Well gone guys.
 
Take care, stay safe & Happy Virtual Running all!
 
Graham & Wendy