Now is the time of year when you may be doing your winter training or having a break after a hard year of racing.
There are a lot of events in the 2020 BMAF calendar for all athletics disciplines but they are now all scheduled for track & field, road and cross-country. There are one or two premier events in each discipline, one which we hope you will do your best to attend, using the rest as part of your training/build up to those events. These premier events are shown in bold on the list given below.
| Track & Field | ||
| 23 Feb | South of England Masters Indoor T&F Championships | Lee Valley, London |
| 23 Feb | BMAF Indoor Pentathlon Championships | Lee Valley, London |
| 01 Mar | England Masters Indoor Inter-Area T&F Championships | Lee Valley, London |
| 07-08 Mar | BMAF Indoor T&F and Winter Throws Championships | Lee Valley, London |
| 07 Jun | BMAF Outdoor Pentathlon Championships | Horspath, Oxford |
| 07 Jun | BMAF 10,000m Track Runs & Walks Championships | Horspath, Oxford |
| Road | ||
| 09 Feb | BMAF 10M Championships | Poole |
| 19 Apr | BMAF 10k Championships | Falkirk, Scotland |
| 16 May | BMAF Road Relays | Sutton Park, Birmingham |
| 24 May | BMAF Mile Championships | Westminster, London |
| 21 June | BMAF 5k Championships | Horwich |
| Cross Country & Trail | ||
| 14 Mar | BMAF Cross Country Championships EAMA Inter-Area Cross-Country Challenge | Corwen, North Wales |
| 28 Jun | BMAF 30km Multi-Terrain Championships | Gravesend |
Please note I have not included the international and regional events but you can find them in the BMAF website fixtures page and on your area club pages.
Important Changes:
One important change this year in the 5k, 10k, 10M and Half Marathon road championships is that we now allow open competitors to compete for medals but the open members have to pay a small supplement to enter each time which will indirectly help them appreciate the value in joining an area club. A second benefit of this change is that road running members will find it easier to assemble a team from their first claim club, because they won’t all have to join a BMAF area club. The road relays and the 1-mile championships were already open to all registered athletes.
There are now team awards at all of the BMAF road-running championships, excluding the marathon, but including the 1-Mile for the first time. Just three men or women belonging to the same club are needed to make up a team, which is self-selected on age-graded performance. It works the same for the Half Marathon championships, whilst the team awards at the 5k, 10k and 10M have the usual 10-year age bands.
The additional change will be in the Inter-Area cross country challenge. This is now open to all BMAF area clubs, not just the English clubs, and it is combined this year with the national championships and thus you can compete for both individual medals and club team medals, provided you can make up a team of three from our first claim club), as well as the inter-area teams trophy/certificates.
Volunteering:
You may not however have any plans to compete over this period due to injury or other commitments. If so,and you would like to stay in touch, then why not volunteer to help out as an official at some of these events. You can be given help to qualify as a technical official and we sorely need people to do this,whilst continuing to compete. Sadly we even had to cancel one of the regional track & field championships this year because of lack of officials.