University of Plymouth Athletics

UPAC has had a fantastic 2011 / 2012 with the club improving leaps and bounds. This improvement and the hard work of many members of the club was recognised at the UPSU Sports Awards 2011 – 2012 that took place on 25th April.

UPAC managed to get more awards than any other club on the night with a total of 7! Half Colours were awarded to Hannah Blair, Sam Peters, James Sermon, Mike Wilsmore and Simon Cook. Whilst James Manthorp, true to his form this year – came away with two big awards. James’ committment to the club over the past 3 years saw him win his Full Colours award, and his commitment to the wider sporting community and his role in organising the Devon Varisty also saw him honoured with the Contribution to Sport Award:

I’m sure you will join me in wishing all the award winners a massive congratulation – and we look forward to a more successful year next!

Some shameless self promotion here:

Your Secretary and future President is conducting his dissertation into the geography of running in Plymouth. I am on the look-out for any runners who use the streets of Plymouth for training to be volunteers and participate in the study. Research will take place over May and June this year and will involve a mix of digital training diaries, video-recording and on-the-run interviews.

I am looking for runners of any ability to take part. Whether you run for 5 minutes once a month or train 20 times a week – as long as you run on the streets in Plymouth – I want you. You will need to be based in Plymouth for the most of May and June and have internet access.

If you would like to take part, and I truly hope you do – then please email me: simon.cook@students.plymouth.ac.uk so I can officially recognise you interest. Also aim any questions or enquiries to me as well. Plus any participants taking part in the study will be entered into a prize draw to win a highly sort-after prize!

Thanks for your interest and hopefully we can conduct some exciting research together.

Simon

Now that training has finished for the year and our competitions drawing to a close – we are looking for ways to celebrate our success this year when a wonderful opportunity arose.

Plymouth City Council are hosting a mini-Olympics event over the summer and their athletics event is on 20th May at Brickfields. The club would like to enter as many teams as are wanted and will put as much money as possible to the event – which will hopefully see us win some medals!

Competition details:

• Squad size – 8 (4 male and 4 female)
• Events – 100m, 400m, 100m Hurdles, Long Jump, High Jump, Javelin, Shot and Medly Relay

It doesn’t matter if you don’t train for or compete in these events – its just for a bit of fun

After the event we hope to hold our Summer gathering on the Hoe – which will be the usual food, fun, frolics and awards. But this will be organised closer to the time.

So if you are around and free we want you to compete and join in the fun – please let us know ASAP as teams need to be entered by 20th April.

More info: Plymouth Games Leaflet and Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/192757317507673/

Even though I may be on my fieldtrip in Brest – your ever-committed Secretary has still found time to do some wonderful updating for you all – so here it goes:

• The final 3km Central Park results have been posted to the website – thus our UPAC 3km Championships has also come to a close. The first ever winners of this prestigious Prize are Hannah Blair and Simon Cook. Thanks to all those who took part and hopefully next year we will have more entrants! See the full results here.
• The final Westward League Cross Country results have also be uploaded. Congratulation to Hannah Blair again, who finished the league in an incredible 7th place! See the results here.
• The summer fixtures have also been updated – most relevantly with the Armada Summer 5km Series and the Plymouth Open Track Day. We encourage you all to do as many of these as possible, the track day will be particularly good fun! See the full fixtures here.
• Finally I have had to again update our club records. This now takes us past 40 records broken this year. See is you have set one – or to eye up your next target. Full records available here.

Once more UPAC – you are doing us proud. Keep up the good work and let’s have a successful summer season.

Au revior,

Simon

After a fantastic afternoon in Exeter, the results are now available from our Results Page. Hopefully they all should be correct, any mistakes please let me know so I can inform the powers that be.

It was a great day with many PBs and Club Records being broken – which I will update very soon. This takes our records broken up to an incredible 37 since October! And the summer season has only just begun.

On another note – Jordan Morris is currently ranked 7th in the UK for the 100m! Look how happy he is:

Simon

UPAC had a fantastic weekend in Sheffield for the BUCS Indoor athletics championships. We scored BUCS points (courtesy of Mike Wilsmore), broke many PBs and SBs and have a bloody good time (bar a motorway crash and a false start). All the results are now on our Results Page so you can see how well the team did. Many of the events were recorded (see James’ youtube channel), which Matt Campbell turned into a wonderful compilation for us:

Will Massey has also been busy recently, competing at UWIC and the Aviva English Indoor Athletics Championships, posting two very impressive 1500m times – available from our results page. See him racing in Birmingham below:

Due to a very impressive weekend we had UPAC Records broken 8 times – see the latest club records – here -

And also I have updated the Fixtures Page to include the summer track races – so please ask about any races you are interested in.

Cheers, Simon

Thanks to all of you who turned up for the meeting today. It was really great to get all your feedback and hopefully it was as useful for you as well as us. The minutes from the meeting can be found on our Committee Meeting Archive page.

As a result of the meeting we now have the new committee for 2012 – 2013 which is as follows:

• President – Simon Cook
• Secretary – Phil Benson
• Treasurer – Emma Clapp
• Long Distance Captain – Will Massey
• Track and Field Captain – Rachel Spooner
• Health and Safety Officer – Ben Hayter
• Kit and Events Officer – Thuza Edworthy
• Social Secretary – Megan Berryjuice

Thanks to all of those who ran for a position by was unfortunate not to be elected – it is important that we have people challenging for as many roles as possible and I hope it won’t deter you from applying again. The current committee will remain in power until the end of the year, however there will be a transitional period as the new committee gets the reins handed to them.

Thanks once more for all of those who attended, ran committee and gave feed back – it is much appreciated and valued. Also don’t forget about our Committee Handover Social on Thursday - http://www.facebook.com/events/271475092920722/

Cheers, Simon

We will be holding our Annual General Meeting , which is perhaps the most important meeting of the year on February 28th in Roland Levinksy 207. It is your chance to give feedback from the year and put forward anything you would like to change, as well as a chance for us to give a round-up of the year so far.

More importantly though, it is also the time when we elect the committee for the following year. This year we will be doing both nominations and elections on the same day, so if you wish to apply for a position/s on the committee next year, please come prepared to give a little talk about why you want this role and why you would be good at it. The positions available for next year’s committee are the same as this year (explanation of roles on website):

• President
• Secretary
• Treasurer
• Long Distance Captain
• Track and Field Captain
• Health and Safety Officer
• Kit and Events Officer
• Social Secretary

The structure of the AGM will be similar to this: Introduction; Explanation of Committee Positions; Presidential Report; Financial Report; Feedback Session;  Nominations; Voting and then the results from the election.

We want to see as many of you there as possible as it is really important and to really get the most out of it, to get your feedback and allow you to vote for your committee next year.

So in the meantime, have a think about any points and feedback you want to raise as well what committee position/s you wish to apply for. You are more than welcome to ask any committee member about their role to find out more information about it.

We hope to see you then,
Love UPAC

This weekend saw the cross-country team travel to Bovey Tracey to tackle the hardest course of the Westward League Series. It was an extremely muddy, yet enjoyable and successful day with great positions and times being recorded on a challenging course. The results for the men’s and ladies’ races can be found on our Results 2011 – 2012 Page. It is worth mentioning that Hannah Blair is currently sat in 12th position in the league. With only 1 race left to go, she is definitely well positioned to get an incredible top 10, top 5 or better finish! So we are all rooting for you Hannah and hopefully the final race in Plymouth will be a celebration!

Over in Sheffield at the UKA Indoor Champions and World Trials, UPAC had a mixed affair. Sam Peters ran well in the 400m despite not making through the heats, breaking his own PB and the UPAC Indoor 400m record which can be seen here. Unfortunately, Mike Wilsmore could not capitalise on his excellent form due to an in-race incident during his 1500m heat. As the Plymouth Herald put it:

“But there was bitter disappointment for and bad luck in equal measure, for another Plymouth athlete Mike Wilsmore in the 1,500m. Wilsmore, 26, felt he was impeded by a rival early on which led to him finishing the race with just one shoe. Wilsmore had been leading at the 1,000m mark but found the friction of the track too much.”

However, Mike has vowed to turn this disappointment into victory and make up for this misfortune by claiming the 1500m gold at the BUCS Indoor on the 25th and 26th February, which we all hope he does. Congratulations to all our athletes this weekend and let’s hope the good form continues!

Simon