As we have passed the halfway point in the current committee year I thought it would be useful to summarise what we have been up to and to inform you what we hope to be doing in the second half of the year.

It has been a productive six months but not without its difficulties.  Members of the committee have made some important decisions; both collectively and within their individual remits and I back those decisions.  What we have failed to do just occasionally is to demonstrate to club members that these decisions have been made thoughtfully and after due consideration of the facts.  Whilst I can give you assurance that this has been the case I intend to make it my personal responsibility as Chairman to improve the way the committee engages with club members in future so that everyone understands decisions we are making and is happy that the best interests of the club are being served.

With that in mind I will now go through each committee member's area.

Laura has provided fantastic support to the committee as Secretary in her first six months.  She is an important communications channel for committee decisions and her next major task for the club will be organising the AGM.

Jon had to step down as Treasurer at the halfway point but is giving transitional support to Paul who has taken over.  Some important things achieved prior to leaving were acquiring a PDQ machine to enable card payments for kit purchases.  Jon also applied for a new fixed term deposit account to yield better return from club funds.  I am confident Paul will keep up the good work.

Josie organised a successful Christmas party with 2012 already booked. All details are on the Serpie website.  She is now hard at work organising a fun summer celebration.

Sid has had ten years of continuous involvement in Wednesday nights which is our key club session.  We are getting close to one hundred Last Wednesday of the Month socials which is an important part of encouraging the club atmosphere.  He also ran the tenth Beginners course and started an Intermediate beginners group if that makes sense.

Alex has secured for the Jekyll & Hyde Duathlon BTF event mark level 2 accreditation and has recruited two new level one BTF qualified triathlon coaches.  In next 6 months he aims to have the club accredited to BTF club mark and four coaches should have completed their BTF level 2 coaching qualifications.

Ian has reported that Serpentine recorded its best team results, best team placings and several individual Serpie course records broken at the National 12 & 6 stage relays in 2012.  Quite a few new team competitors as well, which is great.  Serpentine also had three athletes representing Middlesex in the Inter-Counties XC.  Participation in leagues continues to increase steadily.

Sam has brought in the new cycling kit to the Serpentine range as well as new tri tops and she has updated the website.  She intends to sell off some of the old stock before the end of the year and will hopefully oversee a kit room refurbishment. 

Amy has updated the member discount pages and many new discounts have been added eg. 15% off Skins compression wear, 15% off Orbana sports drink, and 20% RunBreeze socks.  Various sessions have been organised free of charge for members, such as physio, gait analysis and product demos and discounts.  Amy will continue to add to the member discounts and plan free sessions/ demos on club nights.

Stephanie reports a successful & well run Jekyll &Hyde duathlon 2011 and New Year's Day 10k.  A new handicap team has been put in place and have settled in well.  Stephanie hopes to organise a high standard J&H duathlon 2012 to keep or better the two BTF stars reported above.

Jen can report that several new officials attended courses over the summer and are getting experience in spring Track meetings. This will re-stock our depleting list of officials but we still need more to become qualified.  She has established contact and made links with other clubs and officials who can help us out filling gaps when required – this is important following the departure of both our starters. We have two newly trained starters/marksman who shall be assisting this summer and aiming to be qualified.  In the summer we should be able to build on the small base of qualified officials with some keen helpers and hope to see these train to become officials over the Autumn/Winter.  She also aims to build on the small number of other officials the club requires – those related to endurance and road running.

Rob is still searching for an editor for Serpentimes. He reports that we have some work on the website coming up with Beekeeper updating the codebase and adding some features and fixes to the news and mail sections as well as the tools used behind the scenes for creating and maintaining the web pages.

Andrew Scheer has organised the refurbishment of the club and bag rooms which is almost complete. Feedback received has been very positive.  A cleaning regime has started, and will continue along with further improvements.  He has renewed our training licence with Greenwich Park and a new Primrose Hill licence is being negotiated.  Andrew is working with others to minimise the impact of the major disruption during the Golden Jubilee and Olympics.  Talks are taking place regarding use of Paddington Rec track following its imminent refurbishment. This is part of wider discussions with Westminster regarding further opportunities for co-operation.

Andy Robbins is pleased to report that our running coaches have continued to put on their excellent range of sessions throughout the week with all the newly qualified members of the team participating fully.  This programme is to be expanded over the coming months to incorporate more event / goal based activities so all ideas are welcome.  The coaching education programme is also continuing with another group run leader course shortly.  Finally, a survey will be distributed later this year to identify future training needs.

As you can see the committee has been very busy along with all our volunteers improving the club we enjoy so much.  It is worth remembering that we are volunteers, like marshals at our races or coaches at training sessions.  It is not our role to tell club members what to do but to assist club members to do what they want.  If you want the club to do something then we will help you to make it happen.  We won't make it happen for you.  We often have to find volunteers to do what we think needs doing but we'd prefer volunteers to come to us to offer to do things that they want to do.

Charles