It’s a breezy but blessedly dry Tuesday evening at the Ark Alexandra track, home of Hastings Athletics Club. The Junior Fundamentals, aged 11 and under, have been here with one or more coaches since 5.30pm, undertaking a mixed programme of athletic pursuits – running, jumping, throwing. At 6.30 older children, in a cohort styled the Junior Foundation Group aged between 12 and 16, roll up, still encouraged to try out a range of disciplines, but increasingly focussed on a narrower range of running distances or on specific field events. 

The majority of both these groups are female. That’s maybe because boys have a wider range of sporting activities to choose from in Hastings, football in particular (despite the national promotional endeavours by the England Lionesses). But there’s also a factor of cohort attraction. In an era of small-sized nuclear families, a sports club may provide the close social ties of shared endeavours which children and teenagers thrive on. Where else in modern life can physically active girls find an approved outlet?

CREDIT: Dave Young

The atmosphere is chiefly, however, one of family togetherness.  Parents are encouraged not just to ferry their offspring to the training sessions  and/or to watch their sporting development from the sidelines.  Where practicable, they’re encouraged to aid it by becoming group coaches themselves. While a number of the club’s senior coaches have had long experience of athletics training and competition, and boast advanced coaching qualifications, the club depends for its future on attracting more of the same.

Mother and daughter

Parents may also be drawn in to athletics performance and training themselves. That’s what’s has happened in the case of Chloe Le Fay, whose 15-year-old daughter Rae has been breaking junior club records as a middle distance runner. The family live in Etchingham, 16 miles away. Rae attends Heathfield Community College, and the nearest athletics track is actually Tonbridge. But Rae liked the smaller, more personal feel of Hastings, and appreciated the coaching which the club offers. She and Chloe drive down together on Tuesday and Thursday evenings so that Rae can join her Foundation cohort.  

At the beginning Chloe stood on the terrace above the track as an observer drinking coffee and eating snacks. Then a Tuesday ‘beginners and improvers’ adult class was started, and she got the confidence to enter the group. She may not be able to beat her daughter, but she can join her.

Rae says she was keen on all sports at her primary school in Punnetts Town, but first realised that she had a talent for running when finishing second in a local Year 5 cross-country contest. Next year she won, and since then, running has been a major part of her existence.

At present she enjoys competing at 800 or 1500 metres. Despite being only 15 in an under-17 year group, her results this year have been outstanding – not only setting new junior club records at both these distances, but winning gold at the Sussex county championships in the 1500m and closing the season with another gold representing the county at the South of England Track and Field Championships in Oxford.

Next year she has the National Junior Championships in her sights. After that her longer term goal is to win a sports scholarship to a first-rate American college. 

Father and daughter

Coach Peter Baker reckons she’s on course for that. His own daughter, Grace Baker, now aged 26 and a Great Britain international cross-country runner, trod the same career path a few years ago from first track outings at the Hastings club to an eventual scholarship at Oklahoma. 

Peter has stayed as coach co-ordinator, marshalling a team of coaches to service both the junior groups and the ranks of senior athletes, which includes a number of nationally-ranked veterans, including sprinter Martin Reynolds and 400m runner Steve Baldock.

December is the close season for most local athletic competition, but the club sends out cross-country teams at both senior and junior levels in respective Saturday and Sunday county leagues through the winter.

Rae Le Fay at the Ark track
CREDIT: Dave Young

Rae’s weekly running schedule

Monday: 8 km run

Tuesday: coaching session at Ark athletics track including Fartlek interval running (sprints alternated with periods of jogging)

Wednesday: a session at the Go:ver gym in Heathfield including weight training 

Thursday: a morning run before school, then another track session in the evening at Ark

Friday: rest day

Saturday: if no competition, a 5km park run or similar distance 

Sunday: long run of 12-15 km

Local athletics clubs, Hastings Athletics Club (HAC) and Hastings Runners (HR) will combine forces in the East Sussex Sunday Cross-Country League season this coming winter. Runners will continue to compete in their own club’s colours, but will score points for a combined team. 

The arrangement has been brokered in a meeting between HAC chairman Lionel Parr and HR chairman Nick Brown. Speaking for the HR executive committee, Brown said that the immediate aim is to improve overall team standings across all age ranges, but that both sides feel that this is a great opportunity to forge closer bonds generally between the two clubs. He added that, subject to ratification at HR’s next members’ meeting in September, they will also accept HAC’s suggestion of joining forces for the Sussex Saturday Cross-Country League.

Traditionally very few HR members have competed in this latter competition, but with most of the club’s cross-country regulars in the older age categories (40 plus), and HAC stronger in the under-40s, the arrangement should make for a very competitive squad, particularly in the Sunday competition.

Hastings Runners pose before 5-mile race
CREDIT: Hastings Runners

There are further ongoing discussions aimed at giving HR runners the chance to participate in the Sussex Vets Track League and the Southern Track League, running for HAC as their second claim club. 

HR currently have around 320 members, and cater for runners of all ages and abilities. Each week there are training sessions at the Ark Alexandra athletics track (which is also HAC’s base), road runs, off-road runs, efforts sessions and a weekly beginners running group. The club stages a popular 5-mile road race in May each year in aid of St. Michael’s Hospice as well as seven further races each year for paid-up members.  

5-km handicap

Most recent event was last Wednesday when, on an evening of blustery winds, 77 club runners took part in a 5km handicap race along the seafront, out from Grosvenor Gardens at timed intervals, then back again. The event proved a triumph for handicapper Simon Linklater, whose staggered start timings resulted in 90% of the field finishing within three minutes of each other

Star junior Finlay Goodman, setting off last and passing 56 of the runners ahead of him, ran a superb time, given the windy conditions, of 16 minutes 20 seconds. Ashley Vora, second quickest in 17.41, passed 66. Zoe Fairclough was fastest woman in 20.4. But it was junior Sophie Ashby who came home 57 seconds clear of the field, having started with 19 runners ahead of her, including her mother Lorraine Ashby. Sophie hit the front with about 1,500 metres to go and never looked like getting caught. Next in was Andy Knight, who posted an excellent time of 20.43, making up 57 places. 

Full range

HAC are also based at the Ark Alexandra track, running training sessions for all ages on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings. Its smaller number of members compete over the full range of athletics disciplines, including sprint running and field events. Juniors are welcome from age eight upwards, and there’s no upper age limit – Sean Baldock, former Commonwealth Games gold medallist (the 4 x 400 metres relay at Manchester in 2002) now aged 45, coaches but continues to run at veteran level. 

The club’s adult team competes in Division 3 South of the Southern Amateur League – they’ll be divisional hosts for a meeting at Ark Alexandra on 13 August. Juniors compete in the regional Youth Development League covering Kent and Sussex– again, HAC hosted six visiting clubs in a meeting earlier this month. 

• For further information see www.hastingsrunners.co.uk and www.hastingsathleticclub.co.uk. A third Hastings running club, HY Runners (www.hyrunners.co.uk), remain wholly separate. They hold sessions at Ark Alexandra on Mondays and Wednesdays. 

Choice of route is important. You need a smooth and flat surface without curves or undulations to achieve best times. But there must be no significant loss of elevation (which your GPS will reveal) over the length of the course, otherwise a time penalty will be imposed.

One element that the sophisticated technology doesn’t measure, however, is wind-speed. Which, as any Hastings runner could tell you, is fundamental to timed performance even on a circular track, let alone a route where you can select to have an air current at your back from start to finish. With a 20-plus mph breeze blowing along the coast from the south-west over the weekend of 4th/5th July, all the lowest times were recorded by both HAC and Lewes representatives on routes along seafronts from west to east, whether at Brighton, Seaford, Bexhill or St Leonards.

The wind is clearly a performance enhancer. On the other hand there’s a psychological downside to virtual racing – the lack of immediate physical competition. Both hunting cheetahs and their prey can be seen to streak faster when the chase is full on. Record books show that human beings at close quarters will push themselves in the same way.  In running as in other forms of human interaction, social proximity has its advantages.  

• The illustration below shows one leading competitor’s digital return for his one mile run from Warrior Square to Pelham Place on 4th July.