Return of the Meanwood Valley Trail race 2018, marshals required

The club is once again organising the ever popular Meanwood Valley Trail race, with a change of season for 2018, the race will take place this year at 09:30 on Saturday, 15th September 2018. The race will raise money for Lineham Farm charity in Eccup.

For newer members, this is an off road trail race of approximately 7 miles, starting and finishing at Old Leo's. The course is a twisting, turning and undulating route, taking in the paths through the Adel Woods and Meanwood Park sections of the picturesque Meanwood Valley.

Note that this will be a seniors' race with junior races being held on a separate occasion.

A club organising committee has been meeting for several months already to plan the event and complete all the race registration documentation. We have again engaged RaceBest to manage our race entry system.

We need your help please! As always when we organise an off-road trail race of this nature, we will need Valley Striders club members to volunteer to help as course marshals and in some cases, as team leaders to get involved in the organisation, preparation and smooth operation of the race. This really will need a big team effort if we are to make the race a success and we would ask that club members from all sections make an effort to support this important event, which will also raise money for charity. Feel free to ask your family and friends that may be available and interested in helping out on the morning of 15th September?

We will confirm detailed teams, contact numbers and plans nearer to the date of the race. It would certainly help us if people that have led sub-teams in previous years are able to come forward again and give us the benefit of their experience (if available)? We need people to undertake a varied number of essential roles from managing the limited car parking; to running the water stations; timing and start and finish teams; and general course marshalling duties: ensuring that runners are directed along the race course at key turns and path junctions, encouraging runners and reporting any incidents / runner injuries through to headquarters for first aid /medical support. We will also deploy a tail runner to run the course with the last competitor, so that the marshals have clear visibility of when they can leave their posts.

We are asking members please not to enter the race until such time that we confirm that we have enough volunteers. With the race starting at 09:30 we will need some keen volunteers to mark out the course early; with most volunteers required from around 8:00 am and marshals in place across the route by 09:00. We expect that we will be completely finished at Leo's by late lunchtime.

Thank you to everyone in advance for your support. Please contact Steph Gledhill to volunteer to get involved: [email protected]

Emailed from "vsupdate" 24 July 2018