New Member Information

Welcome to the club!

The idea of this page is to provide you with some basic information about the various aspects of the club and show you where you can find out more information where appropriate.

Organised Run Sessions

Organised club run sessions take place every:

  • Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evening at 7:00pm (excluding bank holidays)
  • Friday evening at 6:30pm
  • Sunday morning at 9:00am for a long run (time and distance varies).

Details of our sessions are sent to all members via email on a weekly basis.

All sessions are ability based and we advise you speak to a session leader to make sure you’re with the right group when you set off. A rough guide to session ability is also available at http://www.pontelandrunners.org.uk/training/club-run-sessions

You need to register to use the RunTogether system and this is the only way to book on to sessions. If you need to cancel attendance at a session you must also use the RunTogether system to do this.

If you want to join us for a run session and not a member, you are more than welcome but you will need to register on RunTogether and book a session.

Cross Country, Relays and other Races

We love cross country and it’s much more fun than when you did it at school. All abilities are very welcome and there are separate Mens and Ladies races as well as junior distances. To find out more about taking part speak to any club run session leader. Full details of each year’s races can be found at http://www.harrierleague.com .

There are lots of local races you can enter. A really good site to see what going on is www.northeastraces.com – if you are thinking of entering any of them then why not post on the closed Facebook page to see if anyone else is interested?

Club Kit

The club has a range of clothing (hoodies, bobble hats etc.) all branded in club colours with the club name and logo on it. If you’re planning on doing cross country or any of the road relay races, then you must wear a club race vest. We encourage all club members to wear their club vest at other races too.

Vests, hoodies and t-shirts can be ordered direct from our club shop. Andrea Simmons looks after orders for all other club kit – email clothing@pontelandrunners.org.uk for more information.

Facebook Communications

There are two main Facebook pages used by the club.

The club public Facebook page is used to promote organised club sessions that are being run by a qualified run/cycle/swim leader. This page is also used to promote the activities that generally represent what the club is about and what activities we’re involved with such as race reports.

We also have a closed Facebook group that is only accessible to club members. This group is used for more informal activities and for organising things like lifts to races, events that might be of interest to other club members etc. Anyone who is a member can post to this group.

Your Safety and Welfare

Most of our sessions take place on quiet public roads around the Ponteland area but we still want to do our best to make sure that everyone is safe and so far no one has ever been run over by a car at a session!

Please make sure you listen to the instructions of the session leaders and always, always wear high visibility clothing supplemented with armband lights/head torches when it’s dark.

We also recommend that everyone carries information about who we should contact in case of emergency (ICE). There are a few ways you can do this such as: –

  • Carry your parkrun barcode with you
  • Put your ICE details on a bit of paper and wrap it cling film or a plastic bag

Heidi Finlay is our club welfare officer. If anyone wishes to contact Heidi they can do so at welfare@pontelandrunners.org.uk

What about Triathlon?

You might hear other runners talking about Triathlon as a large number of club members are also regular competitors in Triathlon events. You can find out more about this by visiting http://www.pontelandrunners.org.uk/ponteland-triathlon. We organise “Go-Tri” events for people that want to give this crazy sport a try out.

Who we are

The club is run entirely by volunteers made up of a small committee and session leaders. You can find it more about these at the following links

http://www.pontelandrunners.org.uk/about/

http://www.pontelandrunners.org.uk/about/lirf-run-leaders

http://www.pontelandrunners.org.uk/about/club-constitution

Park Runs

We love ParkRun, ParkRun is our friend. So much so that we even have our own ParkRun championship so it’s worth getting registered at  http://www.parkrun.org.uk

Club Championship

The club championship gives all members the chance to be crowned the annual club champion. It’s based on gender and age rankings so everyone has a fair chance of winning. You can find out more at https://www.pontelandrunners.org.uk/club-championship-2022/ 

Social Events

We hold various social events throughout the year such as our annual awards and quiz night, post cross country night out, Christmas handicap and other ad hoc things such as social bike rides and anything else that is an excuse for food and drink. We advertise these events via our club Facebook page and are always looking for more ideas for events. If you have any ideas, please contact Helen O’Neil our social secretary at social@pontelandrunners.org.uk

If you have any questions or ideas about the club, please ask any of the session leaders. If they can’t help directly then they’ll be able to point you in the direction of someone that can.