The 26.2 Road Runners Club started life as an ambitious pipe-dream of five founder members. Bill Bull, a former Olympic rower, David Emery sports journalist, Barry Clayton, Bill Muddyman and Greg Adamiw. In 1980 these five friends journeyed over to New York for a long week-end with the objective of taking part in that city’s marathon race. This they all accomplished in respectable, if not exceptional finishing times. However, during a post-race celebration supper of hot chillies and ale they made a ‘management decision’ to start up their own running club upon their return to the UK.
Thus within a matter of weeks many friends and associates joined them in this seemingly mad venture and the rapidly growing conglomeration of would-be athletes, joggers, ex-footballers and other hopefuls found themselves accepted into the AAA (UK Athletics) and we became officially registered ‘26.2 Road Runners Club of Great Britain’, with our club HQ being the Mid-Surrey Squash Club in Ruxley Lane, Ewell.
Now over four decades later, we can reflect upon a successful ‘career’ as a running club with an impressive C.V. proudly claiming an actual membership of over hovering around 200 current members with approximately 60% of us being active runners.
Club nights are on Mondays and Wednesdays, almost always at 7pm Surbiton Racket and Fitness Club.
Monday sees us running the paths and highways around Surbiton and neighbouring environs over various distances from 3 to 7 miles taking about 45 minutes.
Wednesday is speed work – the handicap, intervals, track, followed by a social recovery in the bar at the club.
Saturdays most members will do a parkrun. Mostly Kingston or Bushy Park, but parkrun tourism is popular.
Sundays are normally set aside for our participation in inter-club races or rural training runs often coordinated using facebook.
As a contributor/organiser of local events, we formerly staged our own 10 kilometre race from Hook Road Arena (where in the past many renown international athletes have participated amongst fields of 700 plus runners). Now we stage the Valentines 10k. A romantically themed 10k in Hook in mid February.
Some years we organise the Surrey League Cross Country event on Epsom Downs and every summer we host interclub relay races at Imber Court.
To keep the in-club competition factor active we hold a Grand Prix championship that consists of a varied programme of mixed distance races for all age categories. This involves participation in selected events throughout the year with points being awarded on an individual basis dependent upon each runner’s performance.
On the marathon front quite a few of us older members have given this distance a bit of a rest from current activities but there are still plenty of the club faithfuls who cannot resist the challenge of completing those 26.2 miles.
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