Many thanks to all of you who have been volunteering with beginners this past term.
I have been having various discussions over the past week, in particular with the run leaders, and also with various volunteers over the past term. As we have only just renamed the most improved beginners award after Rob Willin, I have been reluctant to reduce our beginners’ offering but I think there are ways in which we can improve the experience for both beginners (graduates) and volunteers.
For many years now, we have been offering beginners three times in the year.
- Without Rob, this is more of a burden on the remaining volunteers and we need to consider how to allow volunteers time to do their own thing (we have already stopped trying to do beginners during the EHM training period).
- There has been comment on the difficulty of encouraging new graduates to try out club sessions and this may be partly due to the relatively low numbers.
We are going to suggest that we offer only one beginners programme in each year starting in October (or at least after EHM) with a follow-on in the next term only for beginners who have already started but, for whatever reason, couldn’t complete the programme in a single term (so no new beginners in the follow-on).
This has the advantages of:
- a larger group all graduating and moving up to join the club together, which makes a difference. There would then be a decent selection of runners to choose from for the Rob Willin award
- it would also help with recruiting volunteers as people can plan their time more easily and commit if it’s just the one term (plus the top up).
We have also decided not to offer the next beginners programme scheduled to start in the last week of April. It has been advertised but there were only 8 signed up for Wednesday and 1 for Thursday. Neither of these groups would be viable with the current numbers and it would take a major advertising campaign in a short space of time to attract sufficient numbers to make the programme worth offering.
So many thanks for all you have done to support those starting their running journeys and we'll be in touch about the next beginners programme, probabably some time in August or September.
If you or someone you know would like to be informed of details of the beginners’ programme in the autumn when arrangements are confirmed, please register on this google form.