It’s taken me a long time to find time to put this post together – apologies for the delay. A lot of other stuff had been put on hold towards the end of the Runfurther season, so I had to get on with some of that, or get in serious trouble with my family! Karen Nash has also written the weekend up, and you can find her blog entry here.
Anyway, we had a great time on the AGM weekend. The Dark & White Mini Mountain Marathon on the Saturday was a day for navigators – 4 hours in the clouds around the rim of Kinder Scout and the peat bog that goes under the name of Brown Knoll. That meant I had a great time, whilst a lot of good runners lost a lot of time. The weather wasn’t as bad as it could have been, & we didn’t get too wet. Anyone considering running a full 2-day mountain marathon would do well to have a go at one of these events first, as it’s a good introduction. All the navigational challenge, without having to carry your overnight gear or do it again the next day.
After the race I put my tent up, had a quick shower, and then it was off to the Rambler Inn to set up for the AGM/prizegiving. We got the flags up outside, got the projector showing Nick’s photos from the year’s races, and got the beer in.
Thanks to everyone who turned up – as our members are all over the place we can’t expect that many to an event like this, but we had enough to be quorate, which is important for company law. We had some good discussions as well as the mandatory items such as electing officers. The minutes of the meeting and our financial statement can be found on the meetings page here. Many thanks to Emma David, who was co-opted onto the committee early in the year. She’s done a lot of good work for Runfurther, but has now had to stand down, as she’s too busy with her business.
The main message from the AGM was that Runfurther was very much back in business in 2014, with a successful year under our belt. We now need to get more runners involved, so we’ll be doing more publicity work. We need more help though: anyone who can help with social media in particular would be a great help to us. Any Facebook/Twitter whizzes out there? Or anything else you can help with – just get in touch.
We then moved on to the prizegiving, and after all the prizes were awarded, we had plenty of spot prizes to award, so everyone there got something, even those who were only there because their partner was there. Most of this was thanks to Si Berry of Beta Climbing Designs, who brought along lots of extra prizes from Ultimate Direction and Injinji. Thanks ever so much Si! And the moral is: turn up to the AGM and you stand a very good chance of getting a prize, even if you’re not a category winner (that’s a plug for next year’s prizegiving). Si and Karen McDonald also offered to help with some of the publicity materials for 2015, so we’ll be taking that offer up – thanks to both. For anyone who doesn’t already know, Si and Karen were part of the team organising Runfurther up to 2012.
People then gradually drifted off, while some of us stayed for a meal and more drinks. We fitted a committee meeting in at some point as well, and the minutes for that are also on the meetings page here. I staggered back up the road to my tent some time later, somewhat the worse for wear.
The next day, Karen, Dick and I were off to Totley near Sheffield for the second Mini Mountain Marathon of the weekend. The weather was completely different – clear and a blue sky. A day for runners, not hungover navigators, and the less said about my performance the better. I still enjoyed the run out though, and it was another very good event.
Nick Ham and Nigel Aston took some photos at the prizegiving, and here they are:
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