Club news

As we come to the end of another year for Redway Runners and the end of the clubs sixth year, bit of time to reflect on 2016 in the club, which again has been a pretty good year with lots going on and achievements by many of our members

None of the things we have achieved would have been possible without the team that makes the club work, which includes the committee, all the run leads, all the people who help out in so many different aspects of the club.

The club keeps to the core principles of fun, social, benefit of runners and value for money and it is great that most people understand that.

Behind the Scenes

One big aspect that members do not often see is the amount of work that is done by people in the club – all of it for free, but some of the new things for 2016 have been:

• Club clothing shop has moved on-line, meaning quicker service and more ways to pay
• We have affiliated with the South of England Athletics
• Many of the run leads have completed a variety of training
• We have published a number of ‘On the Run with …’ articles highlighting members

Working with Others

During the year we formed a number of partnerships that worked for both parties with:

• Santander, ICAEW, Deloitte and Mercedes, we delivered beginners groups
• Great Linford Parish Council, Summer of fun runs
• Canals & Rivers Trust, a new run
• Harvester, special offer for club runs
• MK Orchestra, special offer for club members

Events

New for 2016

During the year we have put on a number of new events with

• Redway Runners Festival of Running, an exclusive weekend for club members with four events, a Marathon and half on the Saturday and a half and 10K on the Sunday

 

• Treasure Hunt Run, we held for club members our first treasure hunt run with 78 people taking part

 

• 12Ks of Christmas, our new virtual run, exclusive run and medals for club members and was fully sold out.

 

• Newport Pagnell Carnival, we turned this year’s Carnival Sport parade green in July

Regulars

Beat the Barge, again this year we sold out all 100 places for the second running of this event, and with great weather was a fantastic afternoon at Linford Manor Park

Furzton Relay, was also blessed with great weather and was almost sold out with 48 teams taking part

Running Events

Some of the numbers of Redway runners taking part at races during the year has been impressive and meaning a big green turnout with

• Bournemouth Festival of Running, 110 taking part
• Bacchus Wine run 85 staggering round the course
• Milton Keynes Festival of Running 218 taking part in races
• Winter Half Marathon, 170 going for a paddle
• Milton Keynes Marathon weekend, just soooo many running and helping with the event

Club Sponsored events

Cross Country, The last year has seen record numbers taking part in the Chiltern League Cross Country, at the end of the season in March we were promoted to Division one, which is a major achievement. This year the club is performing well and putting out good sized teams for the Saturday afternoon races

Nationals, for the first time the club was represented at the National relays and we put in two teams for this event, and they learnt a lot and put in a great performance and did well against other local teams

Socials

We have had some fantastic social events during the year; we kicked of the year with the annual visit to the Ice Hockey in January.

In the summer we did an impromptu pub visit during the warm week we had and loads turned up in the Cross Keys

We have been to the Brassiere at MK college, a great club Christmas party and just recently the MK Biergarten opened its doors just for us.

Numbers

Some of the numbers in the club are fantastic:

• We currently have the highest ever number of club members with 1,032
• On our Facebook page we have 2,854 people following us
• Our club weekly mail goes to 1,943 people each week
• We even have 285 people in the club Strava group

These numbers are fantastic and we now have a big audience not just in Milton Keynes but around the world with the club mail and Facebook

Beginners

We have held in 2016, eleven of our free beginners groups, which has seen 385 people start running with the club, we have during the year continued to review these courses and make improvement, we now have a core group of Beginners groups run leads, started doing surveys with the beginners to see what we are doing well and how we can improve. We think we have done pretty well over the years with the beginners groups and over 30% of club members started in one of our beginners groups.

But we are not stopping there recently with Bucks Sport we ran a course looking at how we can improve with retaining the runners from week one to becoming a full and active club member, so will be putting into use some of that learning.

Club runs

Last year we as a group have run from Milton Keynes to Miami in Florida on all the club runs, but if we all turned up for one run then we would fill Vicarage Road Stadium (Watford ground).

Even in December, when the club runs are reduced we are holding 22 club runs per week

Charity and Helping others

Always great that we can support a members elected charity of the year with Bravery Boxes receiving a £4,417 from money raised by the club in the summer, this year our charity of the year is Haemophilia Society.

But as well as this we have collected food for the Milton Keynes Food Bank at Christmas

In addition to this the club has supported many local events and races in Milton Keynes to help other runners, with a big turnout in May for the Milton Keynes Marathon weekend, we had 28 helpers at the Silverstone half marathon, we ran a water station at the NSPCC MK Half Marathon and helped at two water stations at the MK Winter half at short notice.

Trips

Again during the year we have had two overseas trips to the Malaga Half Marathon in Spain and the Ljubljana Half Marathon, then also two UK trips to Torbay half Marathon and the Isle of Wight Half Marathon

Members benefits

One of the core values of the club has been it is for the benefit of runners and we have mentioned a number of Redway Runner only events and socials we held (RR Festival of Running, Beat the Barge, Treasure run, 12Ks of Christmas, MK Biergarten), we have also been able to deliver a number of special offers including

• Wilkinson exclusive discount shopping evening
• Free running belts from Camden Gear
• Free entry to the Marathon clinic
• Exclusive free session Pat’s Pilates

New Club Runs

During 2016 we have introduced even more runs and improved some runs with:

• Step Up Sundays
• Thursday morning Step Up run
• Wednesday evening Step Up and Social run
• The 640 group has returned
• Tuesday morning have started to go on tour
• Trail Finder run
• Mojo course
• Saturday starter/beginners homework run

Supporting Runners

During the year a number of our runners have attended training to be able to support runners who may need a little extra help to enable running, this has really worked well and benefits of this programme have already been seen.

 

You can watch the video of 2016 at:

https://quik.gopro.com/v/BhRpv0zNdC/

 

So on reflection on another great year in Redway Runners we can still say:

 

We Run Milton Keynes