Claremont in Lockdown Weeks 10 to 13

As lockdown eases and the regulations have become less strict, it has been getting easier to run with club colleagues and friend. Many at Claremont have been taking advantage of this to get together in socially distanced groups of up to 6.

We still haven’t been able to meet more formally as a club, though steps are in place to enable this to happen shortly – we now have a Covid 19 co-ordinator in Bill Milbourne and a risk assessment as required by England Athletics. Despite this, we have had a busy month!

We finished the Lockdown Bingo at the end of May, with Maddie Day claiming the prize for a diagonal and Richard Slack winning the full house. Also at the end of May, we had 10 teams competing in the Virtual Gordon Smith Relays.

This was followed by a Lads v Lasses Hill Challenge , which proved very popular especially with the ladies as they won by a fairly comfortable margin! We followed this up by Running a Rainbow, scavenging for items and running over bridges (photos here). Next up it’s the Men v Women again – this time to see who can run the furthest in 39 minutes.

Kenny has continued in his role as club comedian and resident DJ and Dave Manners is still raising the bar when it comes to Strava Art. Jamie Harding had us enthralled with weekly episodes of The Claremont Killings, a murder mystery which has now been illustrated (by Tom) and published as an e-book!

Without doubt though, the biggest event of the month was the staging of our very own Weetslade Relays, albeit as a virtual race. A staggering 191 teams entered, including 12 from Claremont. The race was won by Morpeth Harrieres, with the first Claremont team finishing in a highly creditable 12th place.