www.DatchetDashers.com

Barbara Mason reports

A good little event with the different distances and start times working well – although I’m not sure that arriving with the car thermometer reading -8C was ideal! The route is all uphill for 2.5km and all down for 2.5km on hard trail paths in the forest (no muddy bits). Multiple laps for the longer distances, giving a good chance to push for fast times.

5.4km race - Philip Mason, 5th, 23:39

10.4km race - Barbara Mason, 54:03

15.4km race - Paul Mason, 6th, 1:02:19

A nippy morning, and some nippy running too from Mr & Mrs Black.

The next cross country – and next race in the club championship – takes place on January 9th, at Hurst Community College, Tadley, Hants RG26 5NL. The race starts at 11am, but the start is 10-15 minutes walk from the parking, so please get there in plenty of time.

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Mike Raistrick at Bracknell Forest Runners has kindly put together a composite Google map with all the XC venues on it

View Larger Map

Dave Priddy started the year as he means to go on, running off the mince pies with a 20:08 clocking around a frosty Bushy Park for 32nd place overall.

Welcome to 2009! I hope everyone had an happy and peaceful Christmas and New Year’s celebration, and you’re all now ready to hit the roads, trail, track or mud again in 2009.

First on your list of resolutions for 2009 should be to book your ticket for the club’s New Year Party, which is taking place at Charley’s Horse, the second oldest Mexican Cantina in England (there will be a small prize if anyone can find out what the oldest Mexican Cantina in England is).

£10 buys you entry, a free drink, a DJ, a buffet, and lots of dancing like you don’t care who knows! See Claude, Jo or Mel for tickets.

It occurred to me that some of you might not have a clue how to use this site, so I put together a few quick guidelines on navigating, searching, etc. It also contains information on the site’s editorial policy, and how to contribute.

Provisional results are in!

Full results (PDF)

Pictures

A small selection of pics from today’s toughie, the Cliveden cross country. Run in ideal conditions, times were quick! If you want an original, high-def photo, please let me know (chrisbradfield at gmail dot com).

DD Cliveden XC 2008

In the beginning Andre* created the website. And the website was without form; and difficulty-in-maintaining was upon the face of the Dashers. And the spirit of blog moved upon the face of the waters. And some bright spark in the pub one day said, ‘let there be a blog’: and there was a blog. And hopefully, someone saw the blog and it was OK but, y’know, needed improving and tidying up a lot - oh, by the way, you *did* save all the old content didn’t you (at which point your webmaster said “of course”).

The website is finally getting the makeover that I (Chris B) promised so long ago. The reasons are manifold: the current site is pretty, but difficult to maintain; updating the look-and-feel is also harder than it need be. As I am handing over the reins to Nneka, this is the ideal opportunity to port the website over to a blog format that allows multiple contributors, inline commenting, tagging, and of course an RSS feed all of its own.

Don’t be backward in coming forward; if there’s anything you’d like to say, please let us know via the “comment” link below each post [it may initially show “no comments” - click it to add a comment]

So, please change your bookmarks to use www.datchetdashers.com (the old hyphenated version will continue to redirect you here for a while), then sit back and be patient as the website grows to encompass all the functionality of the old website. It won’t be an overnight job, but I hope that it will rapidly become clear that the blog format can indeed work well for the club website.

Chris B

* The late Andre Randall