Midhurst Milers AGM 2021, Chair’s Report
Chairman’s report
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anybody that 2020 was a challenging year. Not only as a club, but of course as all of us individually too.
The Coronavirus pandemic put pay to many of the plans we had for the year, not least our plans to host our own 10k event again. However, this has just delayed our intentions, and we will be looking to stage this race either in the Autumn of this year, or the Spring of 2022.
In spite of the difficulties, 2021 was also a great year for the club in many ways. Our memberhip increased from 40 at the last AGM, to 72 now, pretty good in such difficult times.
With the London Marathon initially postponed to October, then cancelled, it was decided to run the event virtually. Sophie Crawford who had the club place, organised with Colin Evans a superb run, over 4 laps of our local roads. Nothing could deter the runners, even though the course was flooded in parts. Sophie was supported with by many runners from the club, together with family and friends supporting her too. Sophie’s fantastic efforts were rewarded by raising over £8000 for her chosen charity. A big thank you to all that were involved.
Our two club Captains, Neil Strachen and Emily Iredale came up with ingenious ideas to keep our members running through the various lockdowns. Neil put an enormous amount of work to stage his various challenges, which was rewarded with him being presented with the Richard Smith Trophy for outstanding contribution to the Midhurst Milers.
One event that we did managed to hold in one form or another was our monthly club 5k Handicap. This event is all about self improvement as the scoring system rewards personal best performances. In total 59 runners took part, with 7 different monthly winners during the year. The trophy for 2020 was awarded to Joe Vitagliano who set seven pb’s during the year. Joe only joined the club in 2019 as part of our Couch to 5k course, his progress since then has been amazing. Second place went to Mark Wheeler, and third Trudy Fumagall.
The club has now launched our fantastic new website, made possible by hard work and skill of our Marketing Officer, Simon Verrall. Simon has done superb job designing and managing the site and keeping it looking fresh and up to date.
Our London Marathon place this year was won by Lilla Horvath, whose name was drawn at the AGM.
WE also have a new member, a baby girl, born to Naomi and David. Congratulations to all, and we look forward to seeing Naomi pushing in her buggy soon.
Finally, a big thank you to all of the committee for all your work during the last year.
Looking ahead to the next year, we are looking forward to lockdown rules easing, and the prospect of running together again. We will be organising our annual Couch to 5k course again, starting in May hopefully.
We also intend to get our new race underway, and look forward to staging this in the next year.
Races and Parkrun should be coming back soon, something many of us will be looking forward to.
