Landmark Birthday for the Stragglers
Posted by Simon Webb on 26 April 2021
2021 is a significant year for us, our 40th birthday, as back in 1981 a group of South West London-based runners came together to form The Stragglers Running Club. (OK, so we realise 40 makes us quite young to be a Straggler).
We’re committed to celebrating this milestone, although circumstances for planning have not been ideal. As we’re a third of the way through 2021 already, to limit this to just a calendar year would be to do the club a disservice.
Therefore we’re proposing a twelve month period from mid-summer, hopefully enabling us to incorporate our four public races Wedding Day, River Relay, Cabbage Patch 10 and the Green Belt Relay, alongside social events which, even now, are tricky to fix dates for. This means we imagine the timeframe running from summer 2021 to summer 2022.
As this is every member’s club, we’re keen to hear how you would like to mark this point in our history. If you would like to share an idea please email chair@stragglers.org, and below is some of what we’ve been working on.
Forty years of a running club brings with it countless stories and memorable moments - we’ll document this on a history-specific website. We’ve also gathered a complete collection of Stragmags and aim to digitise them, making this vast chronical of the club’s story available beyond the lofts and spare rooms of the diligent collectors.
We’ve worked with Evan Bond, the man behind many a Stragglers design, to create an anniversary logo and will use this for 40th year clothing.
But what about the beer you may well ask? At the beginning of 2020 we made a booking with the Hampton Wick Cricket Club for a pre-Christmas party, sadly we were in lockdown2 as that date came and went. However that booking is being honoured and we will hold a Stragglers party on Saturday November 27th. This will act as both an awards night and early Christmas party. The ambition is to host an anniversary-specific event in summer 2022. It’s also hoped fixtures of the club social calendar Beating Bushy Bounds, the pre-Christmas pub crawl and the December mob match with 26.2 will all return. Please bear with us while we confirm dates for everything we’d like to do.
Finally, we really hope to be returning to Welsh Castles in 2022. That and the Round Norfolk Relay have been a part of the Stragglers for much of our history and we’re pleased to be heading back to Norfolk this September. Click here if you’d like to join the team.
