We’re excited that with the Covid restrictions having been amended this week, we’re now able to resume group training from next week (15th March). We’ve written to members, but we’re also making our plan available on our website for others to reference. Here’s the letter to members from our Coronavirus coordinator Emer, and club President Richard. Our full club coronavirus plan (v10) is available too. If in doubt, our club Coronavirus plan page at bellahoustonroadrunners.co.uk/coronavirus always has the latest version, as well as links to many of the activities and initiatives we’ve been running to keep members motivated! Members can find details for how to sign up for training on the members forum. Thanks to everybody involved in making this possible, at Scottish Athletics, sport Scotland and – of course – at the club.
coronavirus
🚨Further to the news today about the new national lockdown, unfortunately all club group activity/training is suspended from midnight, until at least the end of January. This includes Monday/Wednesday training sessions, and all sessions/groups operating under the club umbrella. Full details on the members forum: https://forum.bellahoustonroadrunners.co.uk/t/club-training-suspended-in-january-2021/4075 We’ll continue virtually as before so do be sure to sign up to the latest virtual challenges, stay in touch and support each other online, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you need a hand, or have an idea! Cheers, Richard, on behalf of the Board of Trustees
We’re extremely pleased to be able to report that club member Oscar Wild was recognised earlier this month with the ‘Achievement of the Month‘ award by the Sports Council for Glasgow. Oscar’s achievement was running regular virtual circuit classes on Zoom for members since lockdown first happened back in March. It’s been – and continues to be – immensely popular with members, and a hugely important part of the amazing response by members to the Coronavirus pandemic. Oscar’s also raised (so far!) over £450 for the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, by encouraging participants who wanted to support his efforts to donate. Everybody at the club is delighted to see Oscar recognised for his hard work. 👏👏👏 Oscar said: “Tonight I had the honour of attending the Sports Council of Glasgow Awards presentation at Decathlon, Braehead. I was nominated by the club for doing the virtual circuit classes from the start of lockdown and using them as a way of raising money for the Prince and Princess of Wales hospice. Thanks to the club for the nomination and I am delighted to showcase the club and thank everyone who contributed to the charity fundraiser.” Many thanks to the Sports Council for Glasgow, and to Decathlon Glasgow. You can still contribute to Oscar’s fundraiser in support of the Prince and Princess of Wales hospice at: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/oscarwilde 💜💜💜
Update, 25th September – Our latest plan (#5!) has exciting news! We’re back to groups of 15! Access our full plan here: BRR_ Coronavirus Club plan and members info #5_ Late September 2020 Changes announced earlier this week meant this update could return us to training with groups of 15, as Glasgow specific guidance was brought in line with the rest of Scotland. There’s also now a route for members to bring informal groups into the club’s auspices. Interested members should get in touch with the Board or Lead Coaches to discuss the steps required. Full details on the club forum. Update, 5th September – Because of updated guidance for Glasgow area clubs, issued by Scottish Athletics on 4th September we have issued an updated coronavirus plan, which you can read in full here. This currently supersedes the plan detailed below. Original announcement (28th August) follows We’re pleased to today publish our newly updated plan for our continued resumption of group training, after our successful trial in August. Our updated club plan uses the recently updated framework from Scottish Athletics, allowing groups of up to 15 members to implement a ‘training bubble’ at organised club sessions. It builds on our successful trial in August, with groups continuing to meet in separate locations by training group, members booking sessions and a declaration prior to attendance. We’re also very excited to be planning to resume welcoming new members along to the club, to try us out for a while to see if they’d like to join us. We’ve had a waiting list for a little while now who we’ve already started reaching out to, and hope to begin inviting them to our expanded sessions in early-September after our new plan has settled in. If you’re interested in finding out more about our club and what it can offer, please check out our website, then drop a note to info@bellahoustonroadrunners.co.uk and we’ll look to add you to the waiting list, and book you in. We are again hugely grateful to the Coronavirus sub-group, led by Emer (who took time-out from a much deserved holiday to update our plan), and presented it to our coronavirus group and coaches this week. Many thanks to everybody involved at the club who helped with that review/approval process. Many thanks, once again, to Scottish Athletics for their framework, support and guidance: it has been invaluable in helping our volunteer coaches and Trustees to put this together. Download the club plan here: BRR_Coronavirus Club plan and members info_ August 2020
We’re delighted to publish our plan to return to group training in August, using the framework provided to us by Scottish Athletics. We are starting carefully, with a series of trial sessions available for current members to book via our website, with sessions starting on 3rd and 5th August. We will be reviewing these events, but are hopeful we’ll be in a position to increase the number of sessions we are able to offer if it goes well, later in the month. We are grateful to the Coronavirus sub-group, led by Emer, who has worked hard to draw up this plan, supported by our lead coaches and Board of Trustees, as well as our wider group leads and coaches. Many thanks to Scottish Athletics for their framework, support and guidance: it has been invaluable in helping our volunteer coaches and Trustees to put this together. We’ll also continue to engage in virtual events: We’ve consistently been the largest club by participation at all of the Scottish Athletics virtual events so far, and a closely run thing to just miss out on largest UK club at the recent British Masters 5k relay challenge. We’re also delighted many members are organising informal sessions amongst themselves, carefully observing guidelines when they do. We’ve been getting together virtually with lots of group videos. Lots more detail on our ‘The club during Coronavirus’ page. We look forward to sharing more news in the coming weeks. Whilst we’re prioritising our existing membership just now, if you’re interested in joining the club as soon as we’re able to welcome new members to our sessions, do please get in touch with us via membership@bellahoustonroadrunners.co.uk Download the club plan here: BRR_ Coronavirus Club plan and members info.pdf
We’re delighted to invite club members to an online meeting and Q&A, on July 27th at 6.30pm, where we’ll present the club plan to – we hope – start a small trial resumption of group training in August. Members can find access details/agenda on the members’ forum: https://forum.bellahoustonroadrunners.co.uk/t/club-meeting-ahead-of-a-proposed-trial-resumption-of-group-training-july-27th-6-30pm/3687 For members who can’t make it, or for non-members, the meeting should also be live-streamed and available for review, via our youtube channel (although commenting/Q&A won’t be possible here)
Huge well done to all our Bellas keeping race sharp during lockdown and embracing last weekends Scottish Athletics virtual distance challenge !!! 💜 It was a hot weekend for racing, but that didn’t stop the 57 Road Runners take on the 15/30 min challenge. We were once again the highest participating club in Scotland!! 👏 and we were 1st overall in the main U17 and Above 15min and 30min Combined distance challenge – a whopping 301.97km! Full results over on the Scottish Athletics website. Of course, we were not just racing this weekend…. As a club, we love keeping in touch virtually through various means during lockdown – a firm favourite seems to be getting in front of a camera 💁🏻♂️🎥🤩 We have joined up with our local rivals Bellahouston Harriers💙 to create the 💜BELLA BATON BONANZA💙 . We also miss seeing our competitors at local running events and thought this would be a great way to link in with them and pass a virtual baton during lockdown Enjoy 💜💙
🥳Congratulations and a huge well done to all our Bellas who took on the Scottish Athletics Virtual Challenge – The one mile time trial – which took place from 8th – 11th May. 🤩 We were again the largest club by participation! A whopping 77 Road Runners took to the streets over the weekend to see how fast they could record one mile and there were fantastic performances all round 💜👏 We say it every time but it’s really hard racing yourself – amazing effort from EVERYONE!🤩 💜Among a host of great performances, our ladies masters team finished 2nd in their category with our other teams just outside the placings. Awesome job Bellas!! Not only has it been a busy weekend of running, we’ve all had a busy weekend getting on with our housework 😜. Some of our talented members got together to create a fun video of everyone doing their household chores. We really can’t wait until lockdown is lifted so we can ‘Break Free’ !!! 💜 Enjoy!! 🤩🎥 🧹 🧼 🎶💜
Time for another update! We’re hoping to make these rollups of what members, and the club, have been up to a regular thing whilst we’re in this strange lockdown situation. Members should now have received the full May 2020 update in their mailboxes, and it’s also published on our club members’ forum. The last month or so has been really busy for the club, with lots of ideas and inspiration and it’s hard to know where to start! Club member Alan Digweed has been a force of nature with his hosted Facebook Live video quizzes. An amazing achievement that was loads of fun to take part in. Alan, and fellow Bella Marty Campbell put together this amazing video on ‘Running Etiqette’. If you’ve not seen it yet, you’re in for a treat! (It’s also embedded below) We were the biggest club by participation at the Easter Weekend Scottish Athletics Virtual relays. A fun selfie compilation brought a smile to everybody’s face! One of seven photographs is the featured image here, you can see them all on our event write-up, and on the members’ forum. We won the overall title (and seven 1st places in total!) in the Scottish Athletics 15 minute challenge. Here’s our writeup! The ‘bella twist’ was an amazing shoe relay video right across the club, which Laura Henderson did a brilliant job of coordinating. (It’s also embedded below). Many thanks to everybody who took part! Scottish Athletics published the online version of their articles about our 20th anniversary, which you can read here, together with some lovely words by Bryan Burnett about the benefits of being in a running club. Over on our members’ facebook group, Gordon Goldie has been running an amazing series of “Meet the Bella” interviews, which we’re all absolutely loving, finding out so much about our fellow Bellas, and enjoying some pics from our younger years (and one or two fun hairstyle choices!). Oscar continues to run his brilliant three-times weekly Zoom virtual fitness classes. We’re looking to start a club social get together in the next wee while, details will be published soon! Our coaches, led by Gerry Scullion, continue to inspire and motivate our members with regular training schedules, tips and suggestions, over on our Whatsapp announcement group. Don’t forget, we’ve the Scottish Athletics Virtual 1 mile time trial challenge (8th-11th May), as well as our Strava virtual segments in our club championship to take part in (following the currently applicable rules about travel, social distancing etc!) Just to finish on a personal note to encourage you all to be kind to yourself, and do what feels best for you. If you’re inspired to train, that’s fantastic, but like many, I’ve really struggled to find consistency or a routine, so just getting a run done, or achieving a personal goal through the day, is every bit as important and to be celebrated. I’ve resolved to take it day by day, week by week, and really relish the amazing things that I’m […]
💜Congratulations and well done to the whopping 69 Bellas who took part in the Scottish Athletics 15 minute challenge at the end of April.💜 There was a lot of buzz over on the forum, Facebook and strava pages and it was great to see so much encouragement and support given to all our members taking part!!! It’s hard racing against yourself, however that didn’t stop everyone giving it their all…. There were some amazing times recorded across the board! 🙌 A special shout out to our amazing Bella’s 🤩Grant Murphy and Cat MacDonald who covered the furthest individual distance for the club! 👏 💜 But…. Teamwork makes the dream work 💜 and as a result Bellahouston Road Runners scooped 1st place overall for the overall club distance recorded, as well as firsts for Senior Men and Senior Women 🤩 Full details on the Scottish Athletics website: 15-Minute Virtual Challenge brings in over 1100 solo runs With the full result breakdown now available too, we achieved the following ‘podium’ positions: All club members total distance: 1st 🥇 U17 and over total distance: 1st🥇 Senior Men total distance: 1st🥇 Senior Women total distance: 1st🥇 Masters Men (40) total distance: 1st🥇 Masters Women (40) total distance: 1st🥇 Masters Men (45) total distance: 1st🥇 Masters Men (65) total distance: 2nd🥈 Masters Women (55) total distance: 3rd 🥉 With an honourable shout out for 4th in Masters Men (50) total distance too. Well done to everybody who took part, to all the clubs that competed! Just a fantastic success and achievement for every club member to feel proud of! Of course, we didn’t stop there! With huge thanks to Laura Henderson for coordinating, club members got together virtually to create this fantastic video. We hope you enjoy it!
Club coach Oscar Wild has been hosting lockdown workouts three times every week of the lockdown on the club’s Zoom account. We’re delighted they’re proving popular, and continuing for the foreseeable future! Meeting details are posted to our member’s-only facebook group. Oscar’s regular attendees were keen to find a way to support Oscar’s efforts, and he suggested donations to the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice – a charity close to his heart, and one the club is delighted to have supported at our annual 10k. If you’d like to support the fund raiser, pop over and contribute on the Just Giving page, setup by regular attendee Roz https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/oscarwilde/ Thanks to everybody who has contributed so far, and look forward to seeing you at a forthcoming session!
We celebrated our 20th anniversary back in January, and Scottish Athletics put together a lovely piece to mark the occasion for the early 2020 issue of PB magazine. Delighted to say it’s now available online, and brings back some really happy memories of a great birthday party. Hope you enjoy the piece, and the story of the club over our first two decades, and what we’ve been up to – and hope to get up to in the future! Purple patch now stretches to 20 years . . . Many thanks to Stuart Miller for the article, all at Scottish Athletics, Gordon Goldie for the amazing pictures, and everybody who’s been involved with the club over the years!
BUMPER BELLA TURNOUT AT THE RELAYS Over the Easter weekend, an amazing 68 Bellas participated in the Scottish Athletics Virtual Relays. In true Bella style – a bumper squad got on board and we provided the highest participation level out of all 40 clubs who took part. 68 Bellas ventured out to safe social distancing routes to run impressive times over 5k or 10k and of course rewarded themselves with some guilt free chocolate eggs to celebrate Thanks to everyone for taking part this weekend and huge well done to you all on your performances – it’s not easy racing yourself! Having the virtual support / post race selfies from club members over the the weekend kept everyone going and gave us the racing buzz we all love !! Well done everyone!!! GO BELLA!! We had a lot of fun too coming together virtually too, with members taking a selfie which Laura Henderson turned into these great combos!
Members should now have received our April 2020 Club update via email earlier today. If not, it’s also on our members’ forum. We’re delighted that members across the club are working hard to keep each other motivated, supported and engaged during the lockdown. A few of the things the club and its members have been up to, full details of which are in the update, are: We’ve suspended collection of membership fees for a couple of months. We’re keeping it under review, but if any member is particularly impacted by the situation, we will arrange a longer pause, so do please get in touch. We shared Scottish Athletics’ CEO Mark Munro’s message about how our governing body is being impacted. Do please give it a read, and keep supporting them. We’ve updated our club logo to feature a rainbow! Many of our members have rainbows on display in their windows, so we thought it would be nice for the club should reflect that at this tie. The Board held their first ever virtual board meeting! Oscar has been hosting regular Zoom cross-fit sessions. If you’d like to be get involved, drop us a line (details usually on our facebook group) We’ve our virtual club champ races in three parks in Glasgow for members, and delighted to see members taking it on Scottish Athletics launched their first Virtual Road Relay challenge very recently. We’ve already got loads of members lined up to take part, and plenty of time yet to sign up to a team on the forum. Lots more going on, so do please stay engaged, follow us on social media or subscribe to blog updates, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with ideas or suggestions, or just for a chat. Wishing you all the best, and stay well, Richard, Chair of the Board
We wanted to share something more widely that we recently announced to our club membership, which we hope will help keep them inspired in these strange times. So the COVID-19 situation, cancellation of club training, and the halt to all racing has been a huge blow to us all. The club’s annual club championship has been an important part of our club year since its formation. Whilst clearly not significant in the context of the wider public situation, we do know as runners we enjoy and need challenges, competition, and things to push us to achieve our goals. These were all things the club championship sought to foster, and we thought could continue, in altered form, to help us through this difficult time. So rather than cancelling it entirely – which was a serious possibility as we’ve lost nearly half of this year’s qualifying races, we revised it as (hopefully!) a one-off, to work within the current circumstances and guidelines. We hope in its adjusted form it continues to help motivate members with their running and training, their mental health, and help us all look forward with positivity, and to keep pushing ourselves. The club has created three Strava segments in Glasgow’s parks (the full details are on our members’ forum): a short 5k in Bellahouston park, a 10k at Glasgow Green, and a 10 mile loop in and around Pollok park. Members, of course adhering to all the appropriate guidelines and rules in effect just now, take on the segments as many times as they like, when they like. We’ll then use the best times members achieve for these segments, as qualifying ‘races’ in this year’s championship. We’re hoping there will be enough events left in the year for members to go on to complete the usual criteria to complete this year’s championship, but we’ll be keeping it under review. Our club is already present and popular on Strava, and we’re looking forward to seeing members work their way up the virtual leaderboards as they take on the challenge over the next few weeks. Very best of luck, and we look forward to seeing your attempts on Strava!