Chingford League – December 6th (Sunday afternoon) Hog Hill
Subject: Chingford League – December 6th (Sunday afternoon) Hog Hill
Message from satha Alaganandasundaram November 16, 2020 09:23
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Hi All
As per Billy’s club email on 11th November with regards to above XC race I am currently accepting entries. Overall chances are 50/50 until we know what will happen after December 2nd. But its important that we are ready and prepared for the event. This mean I still need to send our entries to Chingford by 30th November so that if all ok they will finalise the entries by 2nd December and despatch our numbers hopefully on Thursday ahead of Sunday’s race.
Please see below Chingford League earlier message again for your easy reference.
Dear Chingford League Team Managers
I will post a brief summary of this on fb later.
Best not to big up the later plans at the moment, because we dare not raise everyone’s hopes too much only to dash them.
December 6th (Sunday afternoon) Hog Hill is booked and paid for!!
We will try to go with this, provided the lockdown ends as they’ve promised and provided Hog Hill is allowed to re-open on Dec 2nd- two very big “ifs”. (overall chances are perhaps 50/50?) Runbritain have granted us a provisional licence anyhow.
4 separate senior races 12noon, 13:00;14:00 and 15:00 all in daylight (just about!)
120 entrants in each, pre-entry, socially distant waves as previously. We know we can make it work safely and in a covid secure environment
480+ places in total enables far more people to run, reducing the hassle for TMs of disappointing quite so many members.
No entry to the pavilion, but the league has booked portaloos(!) In a downpour people would be able to stand under cover outside the pavilion, provided they socially distance.
Various ideas have been looked at, but the least-worst option is grouping 3-5 clubs together and allocating them to one of the 4 spots, depending on the numbers of entries you send in. No point doing them yet, but if by the last week in November, it looks like they’re going to keep their word and end lockdown, we’ll invite provisional entries, allocate clubs into groups in a particular race slot. Then we’ll finalise entries on 2nd December and we’ll get numbers out to you hopefully on that Wednesday or Thursday ahead of the Sunday. If lockdown doesn’t end, we postpone the whole thing to a later date.
Men and women would run together in each of what effectively would be 4 mini mob matches. Bob would combine the results of all 4 sub races into a single coherent list of results. Not ideal but we can make it work. This does mean that for the moment, the start time to tell your runners is “afternoon – exact time tbc”
Rationale: There’s got to be enough time between races to enable runners to vacate the venue before the next lot arrive. It wouldn’t be fair to have men and women from each club running in separate races – there’s too long in between. In any case we can’t have spectators and we’ve got to be seen to encourage runners from the same “bubble” to travel together. We looked at having separate races for Division One and Division Two clubs, but that doesn’t work because quite a number of clubs have men in one division and women in another! So we’ve ended up with the above compromise arrangement.
Sunday afternoon is certainly not family-friendly, but a good section of our folks may be able to make it. At least we’ll be more family friendly for the Velopark (see below)
Juniors: The “No spectators” rule is one of the problems – especially in a venue like Hog Hill with limited space. Please reassure them we haven’t forgotten them and will try to arrange something in the New Year.
Further ahead
Velopark is booked for Saturday morning 6th Feb. This will be in lieu of the traditional Vicky Park race, which is looking too difficult logistically, given the intensive use by members of the public.
Another XC / Multi terrain race is being investigated for some time between the Hog Hill and the Velopark!
March 13th relays – that’s a lifetime away in the covid world, but we don’t see any reason why we couldn’t try to have the relays somewhere! Improved organisation, plus separate races for men, women and youngsters would enable us to maintain a covid-secure environment.
Thanks for bearing with us in all of this.
Adrian
Regards
Satha
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