The YVAA is an association constituted (Constitution can be viewed below) to promote running events for veteran athletes in Track & Field, Road, Multi-terrain, Fell and Cross Country.

It caters for women and men over 35 years of age on the day of competition under UK Athletics rule No 107(7). Membership (affiliation form and fees on Membership page) is open to members of athletic clubs affiliated to England Athletics within Yorkshire or individuals who are members of an athletic club affiliated to England Athletics and who live within the boundaries of Yorkshire.  Yorkshire means North, South, East and West Yorkshire.

We organise up to 10 Grand Prix multi-terrain races per year and Championship Races at Cross Country, Track & Field, 5k, 10k, 10 miles, Half-marathon, 15 miles and Fell.  In addition we organise a Road Relay Championship.  Details of all of these can be found on this website.

Our Grand Prix races frequently have over 200 runners and are a great social as well as competitive outing.  Each one is organised as a specialist veteran race by one of our associated clubs and we try to spread them out across our region as much as possible.

The Championship races are mostly incorporated within Open events which are being run anyway. However they are nonetheless enjoyable.

New Committee Members Urgently Required

The YVAA Committee is always pleased to have offers from members to come on to the Committee. We have been lucky to recruit two new members recently; Thomas Sharp, who has taken over as Treasurer; and Tim Holt who has taken over as website manager, but would still welcome new members. The YVAA does not run itself, it needs your involvement. Please don’t think that somebody else will volunteer. If you enjoy YVAA events, have enthusiasm, and can spare a couple of hours 4 or 5 times a year you could be a Committee Member helping to run the YVAA. Without new ‘blood’ YVAA will eventually perish!

At the moment we specifically need to fill two important posts:

1. Someone to take over John Popiołek’s role for race entry and results. John is not on the Committee, so does not have to attend Committee Meetings, although he gets all the correspondence. This could continue with the new person in the post, or he/she could come on the Committee if they wished. Ideally this person (or could be a joint post like with John and Trish) or at least their helper needs to be available to enter the runners into the spreadsheet after the start and then start the results process when they start to come in. This means they cannot run as well. The other person can then help with the results when they themselves finish. YVAA Committee members are also available to help after racing or if not taking part during the race to enter runners into the computer.
    

   John’s spreadsheet is excellent and sorts the results just how we need them and normally it is a remarkably slick operation.
   
   This is a crucial post and unless we fill it the Multi-terrain GP series is in danger of not being able to restart in its present form.
    

2. With Will Allen’s retirement we also need a new Membership Secretary. The Membership Secretary’s main tasks are to send out notifications of Affiliation Renewals required in January and to keep the database of each club's contact details up-to-date. These are of course PW protected for GDPR on the computer. Most clubs now pay by bank transfer but you may need to pay in the occasional cheque to our bank account and work in tandem with the Treasurer.
   
   They also keep the Paid Up Clubs List up-to-date and send this list out to the organisers of any Championship Races e.g. YVAA Half Marathon, when entries close or the week before the event. This allows the results service to mark all vet runners of affiliated clubs to automatically be entered into the YVAA Champs.
    

Committee Members meet about 4 times per year, on Zoom at the moment but in each member’s area by turn in normal times.

Committee Members are also expected to help at the Results / Prize giving at GP's, when available, and also some of the Championship events. We share out attendances between us and in the eventuality of you having to attend a race to help, that you are not taking part in, then a petrol allowance is payable.
 

If anyone would be interested in coming on to the Committee and putting something back into the organisation of YVAA then please o contact me by email at robhh1950@gmail.com

Many thanks,

Rob

Rob Kersey, YVAA Secretary