Committee Minutes - 18 June 2009
Summary of Actions
| Number | Action |
| 4.1 | Mariana to feed back decision to the volunteers to run Lanzarote. |
| 5.1 | Charles to update the Byelaws as agreed. |
| 6.1 | Malcolm H to draft a summary of the policy for the future coaching rep. |
| 6.2 | Malcolm H to add new official sessions to the website. |
| 8.1 | Malcolm H to pass on the message to coaches not to take low turnout personally and that the committee values their efforts. |
| 10.1 | Charles to report back to the member on welfare. |
1. Apologies
Mariana Ivantsoff
2. Minutes of previous meeting, matters arising, outstanding actions
Malcolm French thanked the committee for their hard work over the last year.
Previous minutes were agreed.
30 April
| Sid has dealt with the cleaning issue. | |
| We made a profit of under £1,000. | |
| 7.1 | John C and Malcolm H to organise an event to attract coaches. |
22 January
| 7.1 | Malcolm F to investigate the requirements for EA Club Mark. |
3. Finance Issues (JCurrie)
Jo circulated the draft accounts for the year which will be presented in their final form to the AGM on 4 July.
The committee went through the accounts.
4. Lanzarote 2010 (MI)
In Mariana's absence the committee discussed volunteers to organise next year's Lanzarote trip.
Action 4.1 - Mariana to feed back decision to the volunteers to run Lanzarote.
5. Byelaws (IH)
Ian highlighted some inconsistencies in the byelaws relating to the wearing of club kit in club championship races. He proposed a change and Byelaws III and IV. The committee agreed the change.
Action 5.1 - Charles to update the Byelaws as agreed.
6. Official Training Sessions - amending criteria (MH)
Malcolm H requested clarification on what should be an officially endorsed club training session and therefore publishable on the official club email and news. The committee agreed that the coaching rep is responsible for endorsing sessions as he feels appropriate. It follows that such endorsed sessions can be publicised formally.
Action 6.1 - Malcolm H to draft a summary of the policy for the future coaching rep.
Action 6.2 - Malcolm H to add new official sessions to the website
Rachel confirmed that committee members in other areas can endorse activity for formal publicity. Use of news emails should follow the guidelines she has provided to ensure that all publicity is new and not already available on the website.
7. Taking the Club Forward - update (RW)
Rachel reported that she was planning to do an update of the survey of club views but will pass that on to her successor. The committee thought that a good idea.
8. Substantive Items from Committee Reports
Ian mentioned the SEAA relays change of date. The committee discussed possibilities for club championships.
Lisa mentioned track events that we have to officiate at. We are very short for men's match on 1 August.
Malcolm H raised problems with low turnout or no-shows at some training sessions. This can be a waste of volunteer time.
Action 8.1 - Malcolm H to pass on the message to coaches not to take low turnout personally and that the committee values their efforts.
Sid informed the committee that the local councillor responsible for sports will be coming to visit the club one Wednesday evening.
Rachel reported that a new Serpentimes team is in place. We have decided to use Lavenham to print the next issue.
9. Forward Look
J&H duathlon, 25 October. Nadya is in discussions to appoint a new organiser.
10. Correspondence / AOB
Continuity
Sid brought up the issue of how we would handle Wednesday nights if the Seymour was closed for any reason. Possibilities include meeting at the LFOTM5K or Handicap meeting point.
AGM
Charles informed everyone that they need to prepare their reports for the AGM. Deadline is one week before the AGM.
No resolutions have been submitted. We have received enough nominations to fill the committee.
Welfare Officer
Charles reported that a member has come forward wishing to assist in club welfare. The committee agreed to appoint the member as a second Welfare Officer to support Eddie Brocklesby in this important area.
Action 10.1 - Charles to report back to the member on welfare.
Volunteers
Rachel suggested it would be a good idea for the new committee to get together with all the people who have ongoing positions of responsibility in the club.
11. Next Meetings
Friday 10 July
Meeting adjourned at 2120
Committee Reports
Communications
Planning for next issue of Serpentimes has started, Jolyon Attwooll has agreed to lead the editing team and we will be trying out Lavenham's magazine printing services for this issue. Mag due end Sept/early Oct before the cross country season starts. Please send requests for inclusion to serpentimes@serpentine.org.uk.
Discussion over use of the official mailing list continues, we can't please everyone. Ian has added a mailing list digest to the website (under the 'News' section). reminder to committee members that each person has power of approval/veto over what should be advertised in their area, they can either send emails themselves or request the Comms rep to give a particular person access to the mailing list.
I am standing down as comms rep after more than 2 years and will arrange a handover with my successor to ensure smooth transition of responsibilities. I will be available for any support required and will still be involved with the Serpentimes team on the layout side.
Facilities & Club Equipment
Facilities
Many thanks to Sid for pursuing the Seymour Centre regarding cleaning of the club rooms. We finally appear to be making some progress.
I continue to administer the Monday night swim session at the Seymour centre although still hope to pass this on to someone who attends the session regularly one day.
Kit
The year end stock numbers have been passed to Jo for inclusion in the accounts.
We have also taken delivery of the new Kalas tri kit and Ron Hill running vests and T-shirts. The turnaround time by Ron Hill is beginning to get excessive and trying to predict stock levels 12 weeks in advance to allow for delivery is not easy. In contrast Kalas provided more complex tri kit in 5 weeks. The new tri kit has been well received and I will use Kalas again for new cycle kit in the near future.
Competition & Team Events
BMAF National Road Relays
As ever, there was little interest in the national level vets road relays and only one team travelled to Sutton Park, the V60 men, who finished a respectable 12th. On a related note, I have compiled a spreadsheet of all the club 12, 6 & 4 stage regional and national results (at least all that I can find). It is available on the website - Serpentine_road_relay_results.xls
Aldershot Road Relays
AFD have eventually secured their preferred dates for Rushmoor Arena so the southern 6/4 stage road relays will be taking place over 26th/27th September.
Green Belt Relay
The men were second (again) and for the first time in a while, the women were also 2nd. Clapham Chasers took both top prizes with an excellent performance by their teams. Our focus on the Welsh Castles Relay was certainly a contributory factor in this result.
Welsh Castles Relay
Another fantastic weekend of racing and camaraderie. Even better, we won both the overall and women's trophies plus the Kings and Queens of the Mountains. Our vets team came mid-table (4th) and was 2nd in the Monarchs of the Mountains. A very successful weekend.
Track & Field
The women's team is in 9th place in their league, comfortably mid-table. The men's div 1 team, however, are 23rd out of 25 and will need to improve significantly in the remaining matches to avoid relegation. The div 3 team are 7th in their league, also comfortably mid-table. In the vets league both teams are in third place, well clear of fourth and within reach of first.
Fell Running
Richard Phillips represented Middlesex at the Inter-Counties Championships held in the Lake District, finishing in 15th place to lead the team home in 8th place.
Triathlon London League
Serpentine are currently in equal 4th place in the League (with SLH Tri). It will be difficult to improve on this without some changes in the club e.g. a greater emphasis on sprint and Olympic distance coaching and racing (especially for men - we get a good turnout from the women's squad).
Ironman Triathlon
The debate has started about what to do with the long distance championship in 2010. Meanwhile, Rachel Joyce broke the club record in IM South Africa with an impressive 9:37:00.
Race Organisation & Promotion
We hosted 2 of our home track and field matches at Battersea in May; the Rosenheim League and the joint Southern Mens League. Both matches went well in terms of organisation and I received good feedback and thanks from some of the participating clubs.
I'd like to thank all the members who helped and officiated at both matches and make a plea for more people to get involved, particularly with away matches. Our next home matches are the 13th July for the Vets League and 1st August for the Southern Mens League. Expect a series of "please help" emails from me.
I've also organised the accommodation for Welsh Castles and would like to congratulate the team captains for superb performances and say a big thank you to Paul Fromme who puts in a huge amount of work for the event.
Our next club races are the Grand Prix races in July and our chosen club 10 mile championship, the Cabbage Patch has gone on sale.
Honorary Secretary
I received correspondence from England Athletics outlining a formal grievance that has been brought against the club by a member that was excluded last year. I responded as instructed by the committee explaining that due process was followed in reaching that decision and that we regard the matter as closed. I await the outcome but hope that EA concur with our view.
I have also been in further discussions with England Athletics regarding the process of registration which is still not resolved. I am pleased to report that those in the first batch are now receiving their cards.
I answered various queries and attended to miscellaneous matters.
Fundraising, Sponsorship & External Liaison
I've fielded the normal number of requests for our runners to raise money for various charities and I've updated the website with some changes to the discounts (improvements, of course!). I think the new system of sending a compiled list of both sets of information via the newsletter works well.
I admit to still struggling a great deal with formatting tables correctly in our CMS as unravelling the html is really a challenge.
There's really not much else to report. It's been a pleasure working with you all and I wish you all the best, whether you're standing again or moving on like me.
-Nadya - from give give give, to take take take in the space of 5 years
Training & Fitness
The Coaching rep's report pretty much sums it up for me too. We really need to get more people involved on the coaching side if we are to progress all aspects of the club. Not having much joy though in finding interested people however.
We have had a few people on a Level 1 officials course, and they have appeared at meetings! I have details of a level 2 officials course and will try my best to get people to attend (it is in October).
Coaching Liaison
There has been some lively discussions about access to the training news feed - there are a lot of self organised sessions happening amongst club members and some would like to be able to advertise these on the training news rather than the egroup.
A few people are keen to push forwards with some more performance based coaching and we hope to be able to meet and discuss this after WCR - both myself and JC have been very busy with non-serpie commitments. We are also concerned that we continue to support the club as a whole with existing training sessions, and currently our coaches are very stretched. Likewise there has been some more lively discussion on this issue, especially on the question of whether sessions should be open to all on an ad-hoc basis or whether people should form training groups that only change every few weeks. Everyone agrees that the faster/ more committed runners should be involved too.
There have been some useful suggestions:
- team captains could take a more formal role canvassing opinion about what training needs should be addressed and pass this onto coaching and training reps. Thanks are due to the men's captain for volunteering to help and spending a lot of time on this.
- on an ad-hoc or occasional basis coaches could hold short Q/A sessions for members eg on a wed night in the club room.
We've received a request for funding for another session to cover track hire.
A few coaches have mentioned that there's a high rate of no-shows at sessions (where people have booked) and wonder if there's anything we can do about this. One has mentioned that quite a few non members have been attending - given that resources are stretched we need to enforce the one session try-out rule.
We could easily find places for another 6 L2 running coaches to help run a few core sessions.
Membership Liaison
I have very little to report since the last committee meeting.
I contacted Westminster council regarding a visit by Daniel Astaire. I found out that the Sports person is now Ed Eagar. I am in the process of arranging for him to visit us on a Wednesday night. The purpose of the visit is to get some expertise on the possibility of a larger HQ. even within the Seymour. You may remember I found out a large amount of slack space exists within the bowels of the building.
Wednesday/Saturday are finally running smoothly without the incidents that I will cover in my AGM report.
I confront the duty manager whenever I think the clubroom has not been cleaned. Things are not perfect but cleaning is more frequent. Rubbish bins empty, paper towels and toilet rolls sometimes appear.