Yellow Shirts at the London Marathon!
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Club Ballot Places - 2008  


Here are the names of the lucky Road Runners who received one of the seven ballot places the Club receives:
 
1. Graham Rogers
2. Nick Moran
3. Karen Samuel
4. Dave Tibbles
5. Tonia Cook
6. Richard Smith
7. Barry Hobday
 
Reserves: Colin Holmes, George Fairbrother, Mark J Russell

 

Baggage Handling
If If you want to get involved with the great event that is the London Marathon without the pain and agony of actually running it, then come and join the baggage team. In order to get our additional places, we will need to find 36 people to handle the bags on three lorries. The good news is that we only need to be at the Finish on the Mall, other people pick them up at the Start. The commitment is to be available from 9.30 until about 5.00 but we can release some people a bit earlier when the rush dies down. In return you will get a Marathon Jacket and medal, lunch and back ache. More importantly you get the first chance to welcome all the ORR runners as they finish along with 35,000 others. If you want to volunteer, please email John on john@mackay13.freeserve.co.uk or give him your name on a Tuesday night.

Friends and family are welcome but it is not suitable for young children or pets.

 
Baggage Handling in 2006 As originally reported in PULSE Edition 12.5, in April 2006

The Next Best Thing… by Peter Clinch

If you didn’t get a place in the London Marathon or perhaps the 26.2 miles isn’t for you, then you might consider helping with the event organisation by joining the famous ORR finish line, baggage bus team in the Mall. Organised for the club by John Mackay it really is a splendid way to be in involved in the great day without actually running all that way!

This year sixteen volunteers met at Orpington Station at 8:30 (there are separate teams loading the buses at Greenwich) and made their way up to the famous finish area by Buckingham Palace. After a quick briefing by John and the distribution of passes, we went through the tight security cordon into the restricted access ‘finish area’. Having seen where our bus was to be stationed (there was a blue strip on the ground with 4 on it!) we then were able to go and find some coffee, and enjoy the tranquillity of the Royal Park for a little while before returning to the Mall at 10:30. Having reassembled it wasn’t long before the impressive convoy of about 30 orange TNT curtain sided pantechnicons rumbled into the Queen’s front drive and were parked with pin point accuracy, nose to tail, guided by the walkie-talkie brandishing finish line marshals.

We knew the first runners would be coming in just after eleven, so we wanted to get going as soon as possible to sort, into exact numerical order, the piles of white bags on our truck. We were quite surprised when our curtain was drawn back by the driver to reveal only about half the normal amount of bags – the rest of the space being empty. Something was obviously amiss with the allocation. No matter, we set about sorting and stacking the bags and due to the small number we didn’t have to put them on the ground but were able to keep them out of the drizzle in the truck.

Not surprisingly the crack ORR team got there bags ready pretty quickly but we could see that the trucks next to us with a full compliment of bags and what seemed like a rather inexperienced team, were floundering and still seemed to have some rather worrying piles of random bags with the runners expected any minute. So in true ‘ORR spirit’ we pitched in and helped them out and just about made it in time before the experienced 2:30…. 2:45 runners stated coming in.

Nick Kasper acted as our ‘spotter’ and would look at the stream of marathon finishers approaching our bus and see if he could recognise one of our numbers. When he did, he shouted the number to the ORR team and in most cases we had the runner’s bag ready by the time he or she reached us. For all of us who have run ‘The London’ you know that all you want, once you have finished the race, is to be reunited with your bag so you can get changed and get some warm clothes on.

It’s very rewarding seeing the faces on the runners as they stagger past having completed the race. We tried to give everybody a congratulatory word or two, especially our own ORR heroes who gathered around our bus.

The organisers provide you with a packed lunch, medal and souvenir track suit top. The lunch box is prepared by a local deli and was surprisingly good. Interestingly they were labelled Vegetarian or ‘Normal’ ! It was well after 3 o’clock before we finally gave our last bag to a very tired runner. Despite it raining most of the day, we had a great time and really felt a part of this amazing annual running event. There were plenty of kind comments from the runners as they were re-united with their bags – “Thank you so much for all you do – you are wonderful” Well……..I guess we were!
 


 
Fig 1: The view from the Bus. Has anyone seen my bag?

The 2006 baggage bus was brought to you by:
Theresa Mahon Peter Amos Nick Kasper Peter Clinch
Emma Coe Mark Russell Sarah Patching Keith Burgess
Victoria Chenery Elaine Mackay Kirsty Mackay Paula Ferguson
Alison Tyler Gary Chenery John Mackay Lavinia Midwinter


 
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