The recent Red Rose survey provided two major areas of information. The first was regarding the satisfaction of members. I’ve already written and posted a blog on this. Check the old posts here if you haven’t seen it.
The second area concerns suggestions from club members for development of the club, new activities, ways to spend money etc.
We asked for members suggestions so that we could see what we could do to improve the club and make what we do more relevant to as many members as possible.
Inevitably, club members will have different views and priorities and as a committee, we have to make a judgement about what is best for the club and its members. Sometimes we might even get it right 🙂 I’m conscious that one or two of the proposals or perhaps the committee response may not be to everyone’s taste. Bear with us, we will be running the survey again next year and of course if you have any suggestions for improvement of the club or feedback on any topic, you can always give one of the committee a shout.
There were a number of suggestions, but in summary, these boiled down to the following areas in no particular order: –
Graded Training – More focused training, for example on Thursday nights including faster paced runs etc.
More races – Specifically more races organised by Red Rose
Health/Physio – Better club access to health advice
Tri/Duathlon – More support for other types of events within the club
More training options – Sessions during the day or at weekends
Race feedback – Better options for members to feedback on races
Organised Car Share – Car sharing, but organised
Fell Training – Navigation and more support for novice fell runners
Clothing options – More variety of club clothing and easier access
Coach trips – More coach trips and such like to allow more socialising before and after races
Junior training – More options for junior training
The committee are actively considering all of these items and will continue to develop the club over time.
This post represents the thoughts of the committee at the moment but this can and will most likely develop over time.
- More training options/graded training
This comes down to availability and commitment from club members to organise and run these sessions. If any members are able to commit to organising further club sessions outside those currently run by the club, please let the committee know and we will consider what we can do to support you.
Of course we already cover three nights a week as well as Pete’s daytime sessions so further options could potentially clash with existing sessions. You will also see one off runs being organised at weekends, and a series of training sessions (such as the recent hill reps organised by Barry) on the calender. With regard to graded training, our current interval sessions allow athletes to participate at various levels. The ethos of the club is based on availability for all, but we appreciate that graded training may well benefit members in developing as runners. Watch this space.
- More races
This year, Red Rose will be organising three races. The Worden 10k, The Red Rose interclub and the proposed Cross Country race in Cuerden Valley park. The organising of these events takes a considerable amount of time and effort which shouldn’t be underestimated. However the committee is considering what we could do as we have a larger membership now.
- Health/Physio
We will continue to investigate how we can help our members with their health and any discounts currently negotiated on members behalf will be listed on our website.
- Tri/Duathlon
Now this is potentially a thorny one. Red Rose is a running club and as we stand right now, we don’t plan to offer tri/duathlon training as organised club events. Of course members are free to organise their own sessions if they wish.
- Race feedback
This is one that we have actioned already. The blog was setup as a direct consequence of the suggestions for newsletter/race reports. Perhaps I’m prejudiced, but I do feel that the blog has been a success. Thanks wholly to the contributions by club members.
- Organised Car Share
The idea of a car share is that the task (and cost) of driving is shared equally among users. In practice the driving is often by a limited few. In any event, any car share will not be organised by the committee. Members may choose to car share individually as happens now of course.
- Fell Training
We have a few ideas around helping with this and the recently publicised Brathay weekend is part of some ideas we are developing.
- Clothing options
Now this is an interesting one. It got us thinking about how we can expand on the range of clothes we offer to members, not only the clothes we do now but training items such as technical shirts, shorts, skorts, baselayers etc. We also want to make the mechanism for delivery and payment of items to be easier and more consistent. As a result, we are looking at offering an online shop to include our current offering of vests, t-shirts and sweatshirts, but also some exciting new items. We are talking to a couple of potential providers and we hope to be in a position to provide more information very soon.
- Coach trips
This one is more about the social aspects of the club and was prompted by the great time that members have had in previous years where a club coach was booked and a race became a full day out. The committee do feel that this is something that they would want to continue to include each year and we will be booking a coach for Derwentwater later in the year.
- Junior training
The club currently provides junior sessions on Monday Evenings at Avenham. We are somewhat limited by the legal requirements of working and supporting young children, which for obvious reasons are more onerous than working with adults. We are increasing the number of qualified junior leaders and developing the coaching we offer.
That just about sums it up for now. As I hope you agree, we have been busy with the blog already delivering and the shop soon to be launched. I’ll be providing another update on the results of the survey in another couple of months when we have made more progress but for now, I would like to thank again everyone who took the time to fill in the survey and make such great suggestions.