The Journey to my 200th Marathon

Hans Ho 3 July 2018

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Runner in Hyde Park

Having never done any sport in my younger days I decided to start running in 1983, primarily to keep fit. After running a few ‘fun runs’, 10 mile races, and Half Marathons, I I ran my first full Marathon in 1986 in a relatively slow time of 4:23:25. I was very pleased with myself! I then got involved with a group of people known as the 100 Marathon Club and continued to run more races of Marathon distance and longer.

I joined Serpentine Running Club in 1999, when I started running Ultras having met Hilary and Jan at races. As I live in West Sussex, I don’t get a chance to train with the club but some of you will know me, as I have helped at the Last Friday 5k a few times, looking after the bags.

I continued to regularly run Marathons around the UK and Europe and I ran my 100th Marathon in Dublin in 2006. I also run Ultra Marathons, with distances up to 100 miles.

This brings me to a really special event that took place recently, just a few days after my 70th birthday – I ran my 200th Marathon!

I love WW2 British aircraft, particularly the Lancaster Bomber, and the 16th – 17th of May this year was the 75th anniversary of Operation Chastise, The Dambusters’ Raid. It seemed like a good time to run a special Marathon!

Therefore, on 3rd June at Reculver on the Kent coast (where Barnes Wallis tested the bouncing bombs), I ran my 200th Marathon in the Dambusters’ Challenge.

It was a very warm, sunny day and I had not run for a month as I had a slight muscle tear in my right calf which, thank goodness, was healed in time for the race. However, my lack of fitness showed and I jog/walked to complete the race in 6:38:06. Job done….

I wonder if my total is a Serpentine record? (Report & photo by Pam Storey)

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Updated 3rd December 2024 – Under Review

The Serpentine Running and Triathlon Club (the “Club”), registered charity under number 1207174 is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

For any personal data you provide 1) for the purposes of your membership, and the delivery of services which you sign up from time to time as a member of the Club, or 2) for the purpose of your participation to Club organised events the Serpentine Running and Triathlon club is the Data Controller and is responsible for storing and otherwise processing that data in a fair, lawful, secure and transparent way.

We are registered on the Data Protection Register, number ZB793571.

What personal data we hold on you

You may give us information about you by filling in forms at an event or online, or by corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise. This includes information you provide when you register with the Club, subscribe to our newsletter, register to one of our organised trainings, competitions or events, sign up to participate in discussion boards on our website or in club social media, make payments to the club.

The information you give us as a Club member or triallist, may include your name, date of birth, address, e-mail address, phone number, self-identified gender, nationality, date of arrival in the UK, name of other EA and British Triathlon affiliated Clubs with which you are registered and registration number (Together your “Athletic Data”), your emergency contact details and relevant health information.

The information you give us as a non-member, participating to one of our organised events, may include your name, date of birth, address, e-mail address, phone number, self-identified gender, name of EA and British Triathlon affiliated Clubs with which you are registered and registration number, your emergency contact details and relevant medical conditions.

The information you also may have given us as parent or carer of junior members, include your name, address, e-mail address, phone number, relationship to junior member.

We may also hold your race results if you participate to one of our club organised races, or if as a Club member, you participate to other running, triathlon and multi-sports races.

Your rights regarding your personal data

As a data subject you have the right at any time to request access to, rectification or erasure of your personal data; to restrict or object to certain kinds of processing of your personal data, including direct marketing; to the portability of your personal data and to complain to the UK’s data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office about the processing of your personal data. As a data subject you are not obliged to share your personal data with the Club. If you choose not to share your personal data with us we may not be able to register or administer your membership. Further information and advice about your rights can be obtained from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office. You can obtain a copy, a rectification or deletion your personal information by writing to the Honorary Secretary at the address shown on our contacts page. Please contact the Honorary Secretary at the address shown our contacts page if you have any questions on the use of your personal information or if you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information.

Our use of your information

The reason we need your personal data is to be able to administer your membership, and the membership services you are signing up to when you register with the club. Our lawful basis for processing your personal information is that we have a contractual obligation to you as a member to provide the services you are registering for.

The reasons we need to process your data include:

For training and competition entry

sharing personal data with Club coaches or officials to administer training sessions;
sharing personal data with Club team managers to enter events;
sharing personal data with facility providers to manage access to the track or check delivery standards; and
sharing personal data with leagues, county associations (and county schools’ associations) and other competition providers for entry in events.

For funding and reporting purposes

sharing anonymised data with a funding partner as condition of grant funding e.g. Local Authority;
analysing anonymised data to monitor Club trends; and
sending an annual club survey to improve your experience as a Club member.

For membership and Club management

processing of membership forms and payments (including through Worldpay and/or Strype);
payment of expenses;
sharing data with committee members to provide information about Club activities, membership renewals or invitations to social events; and
publishing of race and competition results

Marketing and communications (where separate consent is provided)

Club newsletter/emails promoting club activity; and
sending information about promotions and offers from sponsors;
sending information about selling Club kit, merchandise or fundraising.

Any special category health data we hold about you is first and foremost to assist us in case of medical emergency and may, in such as case be processed on a vital interest lawful basis. We may also processed relevant health data for the purpose(s) of passing health data to coach(es) and/or leader(s) to allow the safe running of training sessions, club events or club races. We process this data on the lawful basis of consent. Therefore, we also need your explicit consent to process this data, which we ask for at the point of collecting it.

We also collect personal data from any non-member who

participate to a club organised race and fill in a form with information which may include name, date of birth, gender, affiliated club. We process this data to administer the event, create and publish race results.
Or join a Club session as triallist and fill in a form with information including name, phone number, email address and emergency contact details for the purpose of administering the club session and triallist attendance.

The reason to process your data in such cases is to comply with our contractual obligation to deliver the services you signed up to when registering to our event or taster session. On occasion we may also collect relevant health conditions from non-members only for the purpose of assisting medical emergency. This information may be processed and passed to the medical team on the basis of vital interest.

We also collect and process personal data from parent or guardian of a junior member, including name, email address, phone number, relationship to the junior member for the purpose of safeguarding and administering the membership of junior member.

The club has the following social media pages Facebook, WhatsApp, X (ex-Twitter), Instagram, Discord. All members are free to join these pages. If you join one of the Social Media pages, please note that the provider of the social media platform(s) has their own privacy policies and that the club do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data on the club social media pages.

Who we share your personal data with

When you become a member of the Club

You can also choose to be registered as a member of England Athletics Limited (“EA”) in order to compete in some of the running and athletic races. When you choose to be registered as a member of England Athletics Limited, we provide EA with your Athletics Data which they use to enable access to the MyAthletics portal. England Athletics Limited should contact you to invite you to sign into and update your MyAthletics portal. You can set and amend your privacy settings from the MyAthletics portal. If you have any questions about the continuing privacy of your personal data when it is shared with England Athletics Limited, please contact dataprotection@englandathletics.org.
In addition to passing data to EA, the Club may need to share personal data such as your name, date of birth, gender, England Athletic ID with leagues, county associations and other competition providers (such as South of England Athletics Associate, English cross country Association. Met League, Sunday League cross country, Summer League, Assembly League, Green Belt, Southern Athletics), for the purpose of administering your entry to events you elect to participate in.
The Club may also share your name with a 3^rd party for the purpose of administering an event other than a race, and for which you have signed up. The club will not pass any other of your personal data for this purpose without your explicit consent.

When you register as a participant to our Club organised race or, you participate in a running, athletic, triathlon, multisports races as a Club member. We may display on our website or other social media your name, age category, self-identified gender, age grade, participation locations, results and finish times We do in some cases, share (under the lawful basis of legitimate interest) publicly visible data with external third parties (see section “Athletes appearing in our database”).

We do not share our personal contact details (address, email) with any third parties except as required by laws and England Athletics. The club will not pass any personal data for other purpose than listed above to a 3^rd party without your explicit consent.

The Club’s data processing may require the personal data to be transferred outside of the UK for the purpose of cloud hosting, data collection and data storage. Where the Club does transfer your personal data overseas it is with the appropriate safeguards in place to ensure the security of that personal data. The Club uses services and providers such as Google and Gravity forms to collect data, Woocommerce to process payment data, AWS S3 to store photos, Google drives, Dropbox and servers at UnitedHost UK to store data. All are built to comply with GDPR and the UK implementation of GDPR.

How long we keep your information

How long we keep your information will depend on the purpose for which we use it.

We will hold your personal data on file for as long as you are a member with us. Apart from results and related personal data, any personal data and health information we hold on you as a member will be securely destroyed after four years of inactivity on that member’s account in line with England Athletics Limited’s retention policy.
Race results and related participants personal data (name, age, self-identified gender, locations, finish times) are kept indefinitely in order to create and maintain our results tables, records of participation, allow participants to access their participation records and past results.
Any other personal data and health information we may have collected from non-members participating to a Club organised race are destroyed securely shorter after the event.
Any personal data that we collect when you join a Club session as triallist is kept then destroyed securely after 180 days, so as to be able to track individual attendance.
Any personal data we hold about you as a parent or guardian of a junior member is stored as long as the related junior member is a junior member with us. Your personal data as a parent or guardian will be destroyed as soon as the junior member leaves the club.

Your data is not processed for any further purposes other than those detailed in this policy.

More about our collection and use of your information

1. All website visitors

Summary information is collected automatically by our website, and related platforms like Google Analytics and Google Maps e.g. number of visitors to the site. This information is used to monitor use of the website and will not contain information that can identify you as an individual.

Google reCaptcha

To prevent spam with the minimum of hassle, we use Google reCAPTCHA from Google. Google collects data as you visit our site. Please see Google’s privacy policy and terms of service for information about how this data is protected and used.

Cookies

We may also store information about you using cookies (these are small files which are sent by us to your computer or other access device) which we can access when you visit our site in future. We do this to verify that you are registered as a user to save you having to login every time you visit the site, and to store some of your preferences such as how to display results. Use of our website is subject to your acceptance via a separate consent banner, in compliance with UK data protection act and EU GDPR regulation. You can also manage these small files yourself and learn more about them through “Internet browser cookies – what they are and how to manage them” or at www.aboutcookies.org.

2. Athletes appearing in our results database

We collect and hold details of name, date of birth, gender, club, email address and mobile phone number for the purpose of uploading and displaying race results for races we organise.

We do not offer privacy settings in relation to your participation in races, and as such our website may display your name, age category, self-identified gender, age grade, participation locations, results and finish times. We do in some cases, share (under the lawful basis of legitimate interest) publicly visible data with external third parties. These third parties include but are not inclusive to:

Power of 10: operated on behalf of UK Athletics Data Limited, PO Box 1007, Uxbridge, UB8 9NQ. Data held on this site is stored under their privacy policy.
Active Training World (ATW): timing and registration provider for our New Year’s 10K And 5k race – ActiveTrainingWorld Ltd, Unit 17, Thrales End Business Centre, Thrales End Lane, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 3NS?
RunEvents – England Athletis ltd, Alexander Stadium, Walsall road, Perry Barr, Birmingham, B42 2BE. Data held on this site is stored under their privacy policy
England Athletics, British Triathlon Federation and British Athletics.

When agreeing to information being shared publicly you consent to Serpentine running and triathlon club using the data for its own purposes, including, but not limited to training and guidance for new operating systems.

3. Club members

We will not sell your personal data. We will not pass your personal data to any third party other than what is included in this policy without your explicit consent.

You may opt to share your contact details and choose what you want to share with other members of the club by updating your privacy settings in https://www.serpentine.org.uk/members/username/settings/profile/. Some of the information that you choose not to share remain visible to officers of the club, for the purpose of managing your membership, to officials and race leaders for the administration of your entry to races. Emergency contact details and health information may be accessed by coaches and committee members in case of medical emergency. Information that you choose to share can only be seen by other members of the club who have logged in to the database; this means, for example, that your email address is not visible through the website to junk mailers.

As part of organising race events for Club members, as a condition of entry, the Club may require you to upload images and photos to image hosting providers (e.g. Dropbox) for timing verification and other purposes. Entering such races is entirely optional. As an independently run third-party Dropbox may collect and use the information you provide to them according to their own privacy policy.

4. Event Imagery

Photography or filming is likely to take place at our events, is common practice and helps u inspire other people to join the club or engage in sporting activities. It also provides a means for historical recording of our events over time. Furthermore, our use of images helps to demonstrate diverse group of people enjoying physical activity as part of the wider community. Individuals can also submit their own photos directly via social media or by uploading on our database on AWS S3. We ensure compliance with safeguarding laws.

Images can be shared with the Club may be used on the Club social media channels and/or our website, as well as other promotional material, including but not limited to videos and imagery on posters. Event imagery is predominantly processed under the lawful basis of Legitimate Interest, and may be stored securely by event teams, the communication or the committee in perpetuity as it represents a historical record of that event.