Better seasoning required

Glancing through the local club websites, as I frequently do to try and highlight the best of what is available, there is a theme emerging.

All of the clubs are advertising winter training and events.

Its an extremely unusual month in that there are only two local events and they both trace their roots to the summer months.

The final round of the Scott Physiotherapy Dave Philips Road Runs was held on 2 September but all of the other rounds had been held on warmer, lighter months from April to July. The organisers, Western AC, have re-enacted a plan that was first aired this time last year to stage all six rounds  in the spring next year.

I embedded the poll that has been available on the Western AC site into the home page on Monday evening and it brought a stunned reaction from many in the sport. Fittingly for the weather outside, gusts of disapproval blew my way.

To start the spring with a race three days before the Easter Festival and have another just a few days afterwards hardly fits in with any marketing of the sport to newcomers and will surely ensure that the established runners chose one or other. Look further down the list and you will see that the third event is to be held the day that a significant number of runners will be heading for the London Marathon. But it gets worse. Six events in eight weeks is too many for the Isle of Man even without any other clubs staging their well established events such as Northern AC's Up & Running Running Northern 10 Miles.

Quite apart from competing in this series for many years, more recently I have published thousands of photos and a good few videos from the event. This will not be continued if the new plan goes ahead. I'm often told to "get a life" and repeating the same process week after week does not fit into any such plan.

There is better news about the other September event - the Ramsey Bakery End to End Walk. There is a record entry of 454 in this Isle of Man Veteran Athletes staged event - more about this later. The walk has thrived since the current organisers put the date, the course and athletes to the forefront of their planning. The focus of the organisation has been on a single high quality event and the entry list has flourished through the summer months.

I hope that, as we progress through the autumn and the winter, the sport will find a solution to the imbalance of events within the year. You might take some of my comments with a pinch of salt but we definitely need the clubs to apply better seasoning. The once grand series of handicap runs might need spicing up but instead we have a recipe for staleness.