Eliminating discrimination and promoting equality and diversity in running for lesbian, gay, bi, trans + people and their friends
It doesn’t seem five minutes since I last reflected on our achievements as a club, but a whole Frontrunner year has passed in the blink of an eye…and what a year we have had.
We started the year at a run with our training for the Sunderland Half Marathon. Congratulations to everyone who took part, for some their first half marathon, for others the opportunity to gain a personal best time. Everyone deserves a big pat on the back.
In the summer we hosted a successful LGBT5K as a kick off to Newcastle Pride weekend. This has become a popular fixture in the local running calendar and everyone contributed to making the event a great success. I need to extend my thanks to the organising committee, the volunteers on the day, the bag packers, the sponsors and of course to every single person who took part on the night to make the event a celebration of our club.
Throughout the year we have had a jam packed Grand Prix competition which has seen many of you taking part in a variety of different races. We have travelled to support other Frontrunner clubs across the country, and NFR vests have been spotted far and wide in the UK and beyond. One of our club aims is to tackle homophobia in sport through visibility and participation….and we have been visible everywhere!
As always I ask you to thank our coaches and leaders who contribute so much to making all our club sessions a success. We are always looking for more people willing to take on Run Leader roles to help spread the workload. I also need to thank my fellow committee members, all our volunteers, our ever present talented bakers and every one of you who has contributed to making our club such a warm, friendly and inviting place to enjoy running.
The following Annual Club Report contains details of all our club activities over the year. The year ahead is likely to contain some uncertainties in our day to day lives, but I am confident that NFR will remain a rock-steady constant to brighten our mood. Here’s looking forward to 2023!
TR EASU R ER 'S R EPO R T
Patrice Siou
2021-22 marked the year when we came out of widespread Covid restrictions and got back to as near to normal activities as possible.
We continue the work of previous committees in ensuring the financial stability of the club. We ended our financial year with £24,810 in the bank. This represents our reserve and our policy is to aim to cover a 12 month period of running costs, which we have done.
Our income for the year was £2,423 lower than last year. This was almost entirely due to lower number of entrants to our LGBT5K festival and is a trend we have seen across many races after coming out of Covid restrictions. Nevertheless, the LGBT5K festival was a great success with participants enjoying the event. We managed to raise sufficient funds from the LGBT5K festival to agree a donation of £2,350 to the Albert Kennedy Trust. This payment had not yet been made at the end of the financial year.
As usual our main sources of income were the LGBT5K, membership fees and sponsorship. We express our gratitude to David Gray Solicitors, Ubisoft, Luxe England Ltd, International Frontrunners and England Athletics for their generous sponsorship during the year. We also thank members who make purchases via Easyfundraising. This provides a valuable boost to our income and we would encourage all members to use this free facility to provide the club with additional funds while making their routine purchases. Unfortunately, we have had an issue with Amazon smile as a source of fundraising. However, we are endeavouring to resolve this with Amazon and hope that this will be available again soon.
Our largest elements of expenditure as usual were the costs of hosting the LGBT5K and membership fees to UK Athletics. Other than this we always look to improve facilities for our members, in line with one of our main aims. This year we have invested in training an additional 7 Leaders in Running Fitness and we have also
purchased a storage cage to store our Strength & Conditioning equipment. In addition to this, we continued to support entries to the Harrier League and travel subsidies to Frontrunner Grand Prix events.
We have also had this year’s accounts independently verified by a Chartered Accountant with a clean bill of health and no issues identified.
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MEMB ER SHIP R EPO R T
Hannah Fitzpatrick
At the time of writing this report, the club have 127 members; 125 of whom claim Newcastle Frontrunners as their first claim club.
In April 2022, 112 members renewed their membership. Although overall membership figures have dropped from this time last year, I am pleased that retention of members remains high – exactly the same number of members having renewed in April 2021.
We no longer have a waiting list for new members but continue to have a steady input of new runners joining each month. We have had 15 new or returning members join since April - so welcome (or welcome back!). It is always great to see new members get involved, taking part in events, socials and volunteering for the club.
In respect of governance, this year England Athletics introduced its new ‘Club Standards’ guidelines to help affiliated clubs.
As a committee, we continue to work towards ensuring these standards are implemented by the club, in order that we can protect the club’s values and reputation, whilst ensuring that club activity is safe. For example, this year, we have introduced a new health and safety policy, updated our risk assessments and our safeguarding policy.
We are continuing to work on updating our remaining policies to ensure that we comply with England Athletics' and UK Athletics' guidelines.
As ever, the committee are committed to acting upon your feedback to ensure the club represents what members want. The committee meet monthly to discuss outstanding issues and ways forward for the club and take your views on board. You will see throughout the report that the committee have made changes to venues, training sessions and to socials. This years’ members survey is still open and it would be great to hear your thoughts.
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SO C IALS AND C O MMU NIC ATIO NS
Jo Morrissey and Remy Bullimore
The NFR social year started with our 2021 AGM - It was fantastic to see members old and new come along to the Queen Vic Gosforth to socialise, share a drink, buffet, and recognise our collective and individual achievements with the annual awards ceremony.
As incoming Comms and Socials committee members Jo and Remy were ably assisted by Jocasta to make plans for the 2021 Christmas Social. A fine evening was had by all with music from the excellent Hedgehog’s Skin band and an ample buffet provided by NFR members. Feedback from the band is that they love playing for NFR as we are all keen to get up and dance our socks off - luckily the floor at Jesmond Cricket Club was strong enough to withstand the vigorous ceilidh dancing!
Throughout the year we’ve arranged regular evening socials including visits to Barca Art Bar, The Bake One, The Town Wall and the Raven’s Quiz. We’ve also enjoyed post-run Cafe socials after regular Sunday runs as part of our Half Marathon training and schedule of monthly Sunday Brunch runs. Real highlights have been running in the Land of Oak and Iron and heading to Cafe Shrub, and also discovering the lovely Pelaw Coffee Co for the first time - we must go back in 2023!
The club had a fantastic presence at the Sunderland City Runs Half Marathon in May, and we followed this by a post run celebration of everyone’s running achievements at Geisha bar & restaurant. Never ones to miss an excuse for socialising, we’ve also celebrated after a lot of other runs….. Blaydon Race (The Bacchus), Anita Nott 5k (Corner House, Heaton), and the Great North Run (The Hancock).
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A highlight of our year is, of course, our annual LGBT5k running festival and pride weekend. This year we made a full weekend of it with NFR hosting a fantastic running event on the Friday evening followed by prize-giving at Urban Green cafe and then, once #LGBT5kFest was over for another year and everything packed away (with a little sigh of relief) a few welcome drinks for the organisers and volunteers at the Wylam Brewery.
The Saturday of pride weekend saw NFR and visiting Frontrunners from London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester join the pride parade from the Civic Centre to Exhibition Park and spend the afternoon at the pride site. NFR then hosted a pride evening Social at the Holy Hobo and a Sunday Brunch at Camber Coffee, and had a great time catching up with our Frontrunner friends from other cities.
August brought a club trip to OutRun in Glasgow (another great event and evening Celidh hosted by the wonderful Glasgow Frontrunners) and in September, some NFR members enjoyed a coastal walk around Holywell Dene and St. Mary’s clifftops..
At the time of writing we are planning what to wear to the Halloween fancy dress run and looking forwards to our November AGM and Christmas 2022 social at Boulevard, Newcastle.
It’s been great fun organising and enjoying these aspects of Newcastle Frontrunners this year, and we hope that 2023 brings even more opportunities to get together.
Jo & Remy
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LG B T5K 2022
David Rushton and Jocasta Williams
Following the in person event in 2021, it was wonderful to be able to return to the Town Moor for our annual festival of running. In a year which has seen many running events struggling to attract pre-Covid numbers, it was heartening to welcome over 500 participants for our adult and children’s races, many sporting unique and colourful fancy dress!
We continued to offer a “virtual run” option this year which once again attracted runners from across the globe, truly putting Newcastle Frontrunners on the global map!
As in previous years, sponsorship was essential to ensure we offer an affordable event for our club members along with our faithful supporters from across the area and beyond. We are once again grateful to David Gray Solicitors and Ubisoft for their generous sponsorship and commitment to inclusion and equality. In addition we would like to thank Luxe England for their sponsorship of the medals.
As some of you will recall, there was some last minute stress to overcome, namely the installation of a full blown music festival right in the middle of our running route! Thanks to the keen negotiation skills of your committee members, all went incredibly well with nobody getting lost on the town moor!
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It was a special year for Northern Pride in 2022, seeing them host UK Pride. The increased numbers of people attending Pride added a real sense of buzz around the city and felt as if we were truly a partner in a successful weekend of celebrations.
One of the highlights of the whole event was the enthusiasm of members and their families who gave up their time ahead of the day, as well as making the day itself such a success. We really could not have put on the event without the dedication and commitment of our fantastic members…thank you all so much. A huge thanks also goes out to our volunteers from Newcastle Building society, The Albert Kennedy Trust and Rainbow Homes.
As voted for by our members, the charity beneficiary from this year’s running festival was The Albert Kennedy Trust, who work to support young LGBTQI+ people across the country, including a regional centre here in Newcastle. We are pleased to be able to donate £2350 from the money raised during the event, a fantastic amount during such difficult financial times.
A personal note from David…a special and heartfelt thanks to Jocasta who had to bear so much of the difficult tasks ahead of the event; your commitment and determination, often in the face of a mountain of bureaucracy went above and beyond. Thank you so much on behalf of everyone in NFR.
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G R AND PR IX Kristian Burgess
This year's Grand Prix was the first full year free of lockdown restrictions, and the club has been able to go to parkruns, and run in races again, throughout the entire year. The year was split into three seasons again, to allow new members the chance to participate later in the year. 5 points were awarded for attending each event, for either running or volunteering, with prizes for the members with most points in each season, and the full year.
Members ran and volunteered at nearby parkruns, such as Herrington Country and Newbiggin-by-theSea, and travelled to parkruns beyond Newcastle, including Fountains Abbey and Talkin Tarn. Tyne Green hosted a Pride themed parkrun, and more members volunteered than ran at Jesmond Dene, to avoid the steep hill!
There were also some epic races, with 51 members taking part in Sunderland Half Marathon, 10K or 5K, 63 members volunteering or running at the LGBT5K, and members taking part in the Jedburgh Running Festival Ultra and Ultra Relay. NFR also supported other Frontrunner clubs by going to Manchester's It's a Piece of Cake 10K, Glasgow's OUTrun, and races hosted by Edinburgh, Brighton and Hove, and London.
Well done to all members that took part in at least one event this year, the aim of the Grand Prix is to get members to try out new things, in a group of people, and to socialise and have fun. Please give the committee any feedback you have on how to make it even better next year, either in the members survey, or in person.
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TR AINING
Becky Windsor
Having come into the Training Lead role halfway through the year in May 2022, I’ve had the pleasure of continuing on from the superb work of Allen and Russell who have been organising the rainbow run rota for quite a while. Wednesday sessions (hopefully seamlessly!) continued as usual and a big thanks as always goes to Stevie G and Stoddy for leading Strength and Conditioning (S&C) and Run Development, respectively.
A big highlight of the past year has been the success of the Sunderland Half Marathon training plan. The coaches drew up training plans tailored to each colour group and organised a rota of Sunday run leaders each week to help members follow the plans as closely as possible. We had 34 members complete the Sunderland Half Marathon registered under the Newcastle Frontrunners club, some of whom had never done the distance before! We couldn’t be prouder to have helped so many achieve fantastic results.
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We had a LiRF & CiRF meeting in July 2022 with positive feedback from our leaders, and there were a few tweaks as a result. The coaches provided recommended paces for our long slow Sunday runs which were added to a pace chart for members to see, and we concluded that the relaxed approach to Sunday runs worked well.
Following the Sunderland Half Marathon, we issued a survey to members about our Run Development and S&C sessions, in order to help as many members attend as possible. For Run Development, I spoke to individuals who were interested in coming along but lacked confidence, worried about being too slow and holding everyone up - this is never the case! In order to introduce members to a Run Development session, we hosted a taster session in place of a rainbow run on a Wednesday. Feedback was positive, with one member saying to me “don’t tell anyone, but I really enjoyed that!” (you know who you are…!). Ahead of the session, I posted a guide on how to programme a Garmin watch with the intervals, and also hosted a troubleshooting session on the day.
Feedback about S&C was summarised by three issues; it was too far away, it started too late and it went on for too long. In order to address these, Stevie G shortened the session to 1 hour long, I built on the work of the committee and contacted venues now that the pandemic meant more places were open, and we started at sport@gosforth in October.
Lastly, we had three new LiRFs and two in the pipeline - our club couldn’t run (literally!) without them, so a big thanks goes to all the LiRFs and CiRFs.
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