President’s Report

01/08/14

Hello members

Hope you are all well and have avoided all the winter coughs and splutters that have been happening over the past few months. August, can you believe it…. I know I can’t. It is going to be another quick year.

July was a busy month with one thing or another and one member who has been extremely busy is Connor Whiteley. If you don’t know Connor has been selected to complete in the National All Schools Cross Country Championship to be held in Albany, WA on 23 August 2014. It is great to see this young man achieve to such a high level of competition, however saying that, it does not come itself and congratulations must go to Connor for all his hard work training six days a week, which incorporates running, cycling and swimming. All the work is has paid off and we wish Connor a mountain of success in Albany. To our younger members of ORC, Connor was only 9 when he joined ORC and has now completed over 300 runs with the club, so, it goes to show dedication and focusing on improvement can result in achieving your goals.

While Connor is in Albany running his little heart out, members of ORC will be in Mudgee running their little hearts out too! Good luck to all who plan to go to Mudgee, it is always a good weekend with plenty of laughs, good company, good food and hopefully, you can say you had a good run too! If you plan to dine with ORC members on the Saturday night before the Sunday morning events, and have not already given me your name, please do so within the next week as we will have to confirm how many will be attending the Oriental Hotel.

We have a constant stream of new members joining the club which is great. We now have over 400 members and to all our new people, welcome. We hope you find ORC all that you expect, make lots of new friends, receive encouragement and benefit from getting healthier. To all our older members, please make an effort to say hello to anyone that is new – remember you were new once and a friendly “hello” is all it takes to make someone feel welcome.

The Gold Coast marathon weekend was a hit with many of our members and as indicated in my previous report some great results. Billy and I missed not going up this year so will make a point of going in 2015. Why not give consideration to having a few days break from the cold of the Orange winter and enjoy some warmth, lots of fun with other ORC members including trips to theme parks and of course there is an abundance of reasonably priced restaurants. Remember… the more the merrier!

The OCCRF Committee are working hard to ensure a successful 2015 event. Shortly, the committee will be asking for ORC members to help out and be part of sub-committees. Please help them out and the work you may do could be very minimal but like the old saying… many hands makes light work…. It all adds up. This is a great opportunity for new members of the club to be involved in this event. You will get the chance to see how the whole process works and how it all comes together on the day. The OCCRF have their website available for viewing, so please take time to have a look and if you have any questions regarding the fun run please get in touch with the OCCRF Committee.

We all remember our school days and that one particular school teacher who harped on and preached about something you thought quite irrelevant to school. Well, I am sure a lot of you think I am that old school teacher the way I harp on about safety, but, it is important that people keep to the right hand side of the road when we are out on our Sunday runs. I sometimes notice that we are taking up all of the road on some of the runs.   We do not want to have to test out our insurance coverage, and if it is proven an accident has been caused by an ORC member and that member was on the wrong side of the road at the time…..need I say more other than you could be in a very sticky situation.  Similarly, if we are in parklands you must keep to the left hand side of the path. I would be grateful if parents would instil these important rules to their children.

We are still collecting money for chemo treatment for Francine Sammut and the collection tin is at every Wednesday and Sunday run. It would be appreciated if you could put any spare change you have in the tin, no matter how small it all adds up and Brett and Francine are grateful to receive anything.

The new spring calendar will soon be available. We will be having a couple of BBQ’s at Elephant Park, this is free to all members. We will also be incorporating a relay with prizes.

Thank you to Jim Rich (June), Mark and Julie Chapman (July) for taking the mats and equipment to the Sunday runs. It is a great help to Michael Sharp and this month Wayne Stewart will be looking after the mats, so thank you Wayne. We need people to volunteer for the months of October, November and December. So, if you have a ute or a large family car and would like to help out please see any of the committee to get your name on our roster.

A big thank you to our trusty Secretary, Mike Cooper. Mike marks the course for our Sunday runs and believe you me that is a big job. After he has done all that he turns around and does the run – that’s dedication!

If anyone has anything they need to discuss with the committee please feel free to contact myself, Graham, Mike or Billy.

That will do for now for good luck to everyone running at the City2Surf and Mudgee.

Happy running.

Jane Fairgrieve
ORC President.