Email to parents 3 March 2022

5 items some with a link to further information

Please email [email protected] if you have any comments or questions.

Peco Junior Relays Sunday 13 March at 10a.m. at Bramley Falls Park

This is our final cross-country event of the season.

It will be at the end of a busy week for some if you’ve also run the LSAA event this Saturday and/or the West Yorks Schools event next Wednesday but I hope many of you can come.

And it’s free to everyone who has already run at least 1 Peco race (that’s 74 of you).

It’s easiest if I refer you to the page on the Peco XC website https://pecoxc.co.uk/pages/relay.html

Ideally (for you and for me) you need to arrange teams of 3 amongst yourselves, ideally (but not necessarily) the same gender and ideally (but not necessarily) of similar ages. Teams of mixed genders and mixed ages are allowed and it’s all for fun anyway, isn’t it?!

However, don’t follow the link to enter, instead go to the post in the V S Juniors Facebook group.

If you’ve organised your own team, decide on a team name (all teams will be prefixed “VS” but other than that you can call it what you want) (by default I will name it according to the runners in the team e.g. VS Bob/Richard/Paul), decide on a running order, and reply to the post.

If you are 2 looking for 1 more or 1 looking for 2 more then reply to the post and see if someone will join you.

The closing date is Friday 11 March at noon but I need all posts in by Thursday 10pm please.

After that time I will create teams amongst all the unmatched runners.

All the on-the-day arrangements will be published later.

NB if you’ve lost your Peco race number, you’ll be able to buy another on the day for £2.50

NB if you’ve never had a number, you can still be in a team but it will cost £2.50, again, pay on the day.

Peco Awards

These will be presented after the junior relays, probably just after the adult relays start at 11a.m.

There will be awards for the first 4 in each age category.  We have 4 of our members to collect awards.  Congratulations to Imogen Burton (1st G2-4), Bertie Bell (2nd B2-4), Adam Bradley (4th B2-4) and Alfie Jones (4th B9-11).

Training at Leos

We have had three successful road (i.e. on pavements) sessions at 6:15pm during February with children mainly year 6 and above but a few younger.

We were prepared to have an additional 2 road groups at 5:30 this week including some from school years 4 and 5 but the weather improved so this was not needed.  But we will do this if we get more storms in the rest of March.

From April onwards, after the clocks go forward, we’ll have light nights and the opportunity to use other areas including the field at Leos on the North side of the bridle path.

The 5:30 timeslot has been nearly over-subscribed for the last 4 weeks and the 4:45 and 6:15 under-subscribed.  This will be OK for the summer as we can run 5 groups when needed, but this will be a problem next Autumn so I will be asking everyone to be more flexible if possible.

Training at GSAL and other track and field information

See https://www.valleystriders.org.uk/juniors-training-at-gsal-2021/  for what we did last summer.

The final session in September 2021 was a “Sports Day” where about 70 took part in 80m sprint, 400m middle distance, long jump and shot put.  But for the rest of the summer we’d trained at GSAL on alternate weeks with two session times (normally 6pm and 7pm, but 5:30pm and 6:30pm in GSAL holidays) with 4 groups rotating round 4 activities (80m sprint, 400m middle distance, long jump and shot put).  20 of our junior members competed in at least one competitive meeting at Cleckheaton or York.

This year we have requested to train at GSAL on Tuesday 5 and 12 April and at Beckett Park on a Friday evening either 1 or 8 April.  We’ll let you know whether these are on when we do the booking form for April.

These dates will fit in nicely with the first competitive meetings for 2022 – on Monday 18 April at York and Sunday 24 April at Cleckheaton.  Other competitive meetings are shown in https://www.valleystriders.org.uk/events-for-juniors-spring-summer-2022/ .

More information to follow in the next couple of weeks.

Membership payments and renewals

Of the 70 who attended this week’s training session, 9 were trialists from our waiting list, 57 were fully paid members (many thanks!) and only 4 were members last year who’d not yet renewed this year but have promised that they’ll pay this week.

If you were a member last year and you’ve not yet paid but want to renew, please see https://www.valleystriders.org.uk/junior-membership-renewals-january-2022/ for how much to pay and how to pay.

If you were a member last year but don’t want to renew, please email [email protected] to let us know.

If you were a member last year and aren’t sure whether you’ve renewed please see https://www.valleystriders.org.uk/members-area/club-information/membership-list/

If you’re not yet a member, please wait … or email [email protected] to enquire.

Bob