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AGM 6 May 2008 It was a fairly uneventful and brief AGM (thankfully). The main business was the election of new officers and the prizegiving, plus the approval of a revised Club Championship and Handicap competition and a new age-graded competition. Rob Wilson has stepped down from his role as Membership Secretary and Club Kit Officer and the club thanks him for his many years of service in these posts. His place as Membership Secretary is filled by Allan Rumbles, and Nicola Dicks takes over as Club Kit Officer. Also elected to the committee is Ruth Cottam, and Andy Stalley has his co-opted position confirmed by the members. Prizewinners: Club Championship Road Handicap (Men) Road Handicap (Women) Men's XC Handicap Ladies XC Handicap Terry Knight Cup – Colin Wilkie, awarded posthumously for his many years of service to the club Fitzy Trophy – Ruth Cottam – showing a significant improvent
through the year, and making it a clean sweep of awards.
Colin Wilkie We sadly have to report that Collingwood member Colin Wilkie was killed in a car crash on 20/03/08. Colin will be missed by all his club colleagues and our sincere condolences go to his brother Tom who was also involved in the crash and is now recuperating at home. Colin was a member since 1992 with a number of years serving on the club committee. An amiable character, popular member, a regular on training nights and representing the club in races for many years, he was always ready for a laugh and joke in the changing rooms or out on a run.
The funeral will be at East Chapel Crematorium in Croydon at 2.15pm on Monday 14th April. Afterwards there will be a get together and refreshments at Croygas from about 3.15pm. Tom has requested family flowers only. If you would like to make a charity donation instead, his chosen charity is The Marie Curie Foundation. Please send any donations to B.C. Baker Funeral Directors, 15-17 High Street, Caterham, Surrey.
Eggheads A Collingwood team this week (19/02/08) represented the club on teatime TV quiz show Eggheads. Martin Godleman, Allan Rumbles, Andrew Griffin, John Ivers, Martin Lloyd and Mel Johnstone as reserve, recorded the show at BBC Television Centre. We're not allowed to tell you how it went so you'll have to wait until the show is aired in Series 9 in a few months (Series 8 is showing at the moment).
01/03/08: You won't have to wait so long to see how Collingwood performed on Eggheads after all. We've just heard that the show is scheduled for broadcast on Monday 10 March, BBC2 6pm.
Martin Lloyd selected for Great Britain at Saturday's Norwich Union Grand Prix International in Birmingham Collingwood's Martin Lloyd received a phone call from UK Athletics this week inviting him to compete for GB in the Norwich Union Grand Prix International at Birmingham Indoor Arena on Saturday 16 February. His initial surprise and delight turned to amazement when he discovered that he'd been picked for the high jump. He explained that he hasn't done high jump since he was twelve, and offered to run the 2 mile event instead. His offer was politely declined and it's understood that Martin Lloyd of Bexley AC (pb 2.15M) will be competing in the high jump in his place. 14/02/08.
Forthcoming Social Events Quiz night at Croygas: the next quiz is TBA, £12 for a team of 6 (max). Darts tournament - to be arranged
The Inaugural Collingwood Squash Handicap Tournament – Wed 26 Sep 07 It was one of those suggestions in the bar that sounded good after a couple of drinks – let’s have a squash tournament. Or to put it another way, why don’t a bunch of inflexible, immobile, mostly middle-aged runners rush round a squash court for 3 hours just like they used to when they were in their early twenties and pretend that it’s not going to hurt. Six of the club made it to the “T”, accompanied by their old faithful bats, or by the brand new ones they’d purchased just to give them that slight edge on the competition. Fortunately Allan had a spare to lend on the night as my racquet seemed to belong to the Pre-Cambrian era when the rules allowed only a head that was about the size of a teaspoon. The new-fangled ones are almost the size of snowshoes. There were supposed to be ten playing on the night, but we think Allan phoned the others to tell them it was cancelled so he’d have a better chance. Anyway the runners and riders were: Allan Rumbles, Andrew Griffin, Andy Stalley, Terry Bridger, Martin Lloyd, and Mel Johnstone who had bravely volunteered even though she’d never played before. There were a variety of styles on show, from Allan’s power strokes to Andrew’s not run around very much but hit some annoyingly good shots with a mere flick of the wrist, via my run around and swat lots of flies technique. As there were only six playing this was just about right for a round-robin tournament with everyone playing each person twice (two chances to get thrashed by the same person), and the champion to be the person winning most games. Just to even things up a bit there was a 3 or 6 point starting handicap in each game for those who had played before. There were some close games and very entertaining rallies, and a good time was had by all, at least until the suffering started afterwards. Terry was the only one to leave the building with less blood than he started with, and I’m keeping Nurofen in good business with a little something I tweaked in my side at some stage during the evening. The overall and deserved winner was Allan who managed to batter most of his opponents into submission with his combination of power and technique, and because he bought the trophy. Martin Epsom Races - 25 July 2006 After a delay in meeting up due to the unexpected large crowds the bets were on, the food and drink were flowing and everyone came out a winner, especially John Allen, who was the lucky winner of a bottle of champagne by randomly picking the winner of the last race, raising £26 for the club. The night drew to a close as everyone danced to UB40 who came on stage straight after the racing finished. The only drawback of the evening is that no-one backed the streaker to win by a short head. Chris FitzGerald Click on each photo to see a full size version
London Marathon - 25 Years On 25 years ago, I marshalled the finish line for the 2nd London Marathon. It was a lucky opportunity that came about as Woking Running Club needed more volunteers and through friends of friends I ended up at the finish line on Westminster Bridge. Since then it has taken me 25 years to cross the finish line as a competitor and I have several observations regarding the differences that have occurred over the intervening years. First, as I came around the corner at the Victoria monument I naturally headed straight for the finish gate on the right. Why? Because before the advent of the “timing chip” timing was all manual. There were three finish gates, the centre being for the ladies, the left being the elite and right side for the men. When competitors crossed the finish line my job as a Marshall was to funnel the runners in the order they finished. This produced a long queue of finishers and it became our production line. Initially we greeted and cheered; further down the line Marshalls swapped places with runners not feeling well whilst somebody ushered them to the First Aid Crew. Another group of Marshalls handed out goody bags, and silver blankets, then a Marshall with a clipboard manually recorded the number and finally the finishers were presented with a medal and allowed to find their baggage and supporters. Whilst this was going on, there was a great atmosphere where the finishers relived their personal Marathon stories with all those around. However, with the age of the chip, finishing this year’s Marathon was an anticlimax by comparison. Once you crossed the line there was no mutual sharing of stories the de-chipping process was quick and once the medals were handed out, you were very quickly lost behind the lines. Another job made redundant by the timing chip was loading 35 mm cameras! As a back up against problems with the manual timing system, a group of Marshalls photographed every finisher and the clock as they crossed the line. Teams of Marshalls spent the day continually loading and unloading 35mm film cassettes which all needed to be recorded and stored in the correct sequence. Secondly. More technology - not just timing chips! In 1982 you were lucky if you had a Casio digital watch with a stop watch feature. Some even had Sony Walkmans (cassettes). However, today, GPS is the norm, mobile phones to let mum know where you are and even walkmans have been replaced by IPODs and MP3 players. Lastly. Numbers. I remember going to a Marshalls’ briefing where Chris Brasher explained how the London Marathon that year was going to be the biggest ever with 15,000 entries and the expected peak numbers crossing the line was in the order of 2,000 per 30 minutes. In the hour that lapsed between my target time of 3:55 and actual time of 4:54 over 15,000 finished. Needless to say since 1982 the Marathon has got even bigger with over 35,000 finishers this year. Philip Dee 24 April 2006
The Z Files It's quite some time since I put finger to keyboard in the name of Collingwood, but I was tidying up at home, (sounds implausible I know), the other day when I found some previously unpublished stories straight out of the old “Z Files”. I was reminded of the first one with the return to running of Rob Ling after a long lay off. He arrived at training one night missing part of his kit and blaming his partner Stephanie for “putting it in the wrong drawer.” The ever helpful Robbie (Old Git) Red Hat offered to lend Rob a pair of shorts, but he replied vehemently, “I would rather run naked than borrow kit from you.” He didn’t want anything that had been near Rob’s extremities near his. Doug White is another story waiting to happen. Unfortunately, for Doug, he has suffered more than his share of injuries over the years, but that’s no excuse for putting a knee bandage on his good knee at the Brighton Half Marathon. Still on the subject of Doug, he was seen one training night rushing to take a shower having forgotten to take his clothes off. Dear old Rob doesn’t miss out either for getting lost in the car park of a cross country marathon. He only realised after 10 minutes that he was in the wrong car park. Talking of Rob and car parks reminds me of a time when a group of us went to run the Peacehaven 10 mile race and due to my misreading the instructions we were two hours early. My brother Paul thought it would be fun to move my car, to make me think it had been stolen, as punishment for making him get up to early for the race. Rob’s immediate concern on seeing my car missing was how he was going to get home for the meal that Gloria was lovingly cooking for him. While on the subject of Peacehaven my brother won some mince pies in a raffle and gave them to Rob as a present for Gloria to show what a loving and thoughtful husband he was. Unhappily for Rob, Gloria noticed they were well past their sell by date. I suppose the funniest story was at a race following Rob’s humiliation over the mince pies, where he threw some wet paper in a toilet cubicle where he thought my brother was. Unfortunately my brother was elsewhere at the time. We never did find out what the hapless person thought about being pelted with wet paper. Needless to say Rob ran pretty quickly that day. Chris Brooke
30th Anniversary Dinner Dance: a fine time was
had by all at the celebrations, and Mel baked us a marvellous
cake - see the photo on the home page. More
photos Rob Wilson has now completed his 200th Marathon at Kingston. Congrats Rob. Read his own story, in his own words(!) |
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