President's Report: October 2023

Wow, it’s been a big few months with some even bigger ones to come, so I thought it would be nice to touch base with you on a monthly basis via Ultramag to fill you in on what we have been doing behind the scenes, how our calendar and events are shaping up, what new benefits we have to offer you and more!

The Committee wishes to keep everything we do completely transparent and keep you informed. We hope this regular report offers that to you all and gets you excited about what’s happening in Australia’s running scene.

Our Australian representatives are almost ready to fly our flag!

50km World Championships

Next week our Aussie representatives for the 50km world champs leave for Hyderabad, India to race on 5 November. We have a small but strong team of 3 men made up of Wayne Spies (Captain), Ben MacCronan and Tom Brimelow. All three are fit and ready to go and we wish them all the best for a safe trip and a successful race!

24 Hour World Championships

In less than 6 weeks our 24 hour reps head to Taipei to compete in the first 24 hour world champs since 2019 after a break during the pandemic. The large team of 6 men and 6 women team take to the track on 1 December and I believe we have the strongest team we have ever put together. We will touch base next month on the team closer to the event.

The 2024 Events Calendar is now live!

We are pleased to announce that the AURA 2024 Calendar is now open and live on the website. You can now start planning your year to make it your best year yet! Take note of our National Championship dates as well. We have some new events hosting these this year as well as many new events appearing for us all to take part in. 2024 is shaping up to be an awesome year of running!

Not all of us care about records and trophies, most of us run for the love of it and we are trying to expand this calendar for everyone in the running community to take part in and enjoy. We’ll always have our elites but they realistically make up a small part of who we are – runners that love to get out there in the community, experience new events, new trails and meet new people!

Exciting news – we have a new website coming!

We have been busy working behind the scenes all year developing a new website that we believe will be more user friendly, offer more to members and provide you with heaps of cool stuff to fuel your running habit with. We will be offering more content for members such as our Coaches Corner with lots of solid evidence based articles to help you improve and succeed written by AURA accredited coaches. We will also have links to these coaches if anyone is looking for guidance or for a coach. Also new will be our Gear Review section where we will be testing new products and giving you the rundown. We are working on delivering more and more Member Benefits Discounts so you can all go nuts shopping as runners love to do! We also plan to have some fun member-only competitions and giveaways throughout the year.

Information and entertainment wise there will be a lot of free content for runners such as podcast links (featuring our members and also lots of great interviews with experts regarding all things running) so you can ‘click and go’ on your next run direct from the website. Ultramag will now have full free access to all, as we want to share the love. All AURA history and records remains the same but will be easier to find. The backend has also improved but that’s all boring stuff you don’t need to know about.

And did I mention it looks great? So, watch this space, we plan to launch before the end of the year.

AURA State Representatives

Our State Reps have been busy spreading the word in their respective states and doing a fabulous job sharing with you what is going on, what events are coming up and what has come and gone. They are there to engage with the community and help in any way they can so please, reach out if you have any questions or you can post on your state page if you have something running worthy to share.

Thank you to our volunteers

As I said at the start, it’s been a big year. This is my fourth year on the committee and my first year as President and it’s been a big step up and a challenge at times, but I’m learning as I go and could not do it without the support of the amazing committee by my side, with Matthew Eckford, Stephen Redfern and Annabel Hepworth. These guys have been my rocks. We are a committee of four and we work well as a team and I couldn’t do it without them.

I also need to extend an enormous thanks to Alexis Oosterhoff whom without, we would all be lost! His input and hours of help he offers to AURA from results compilation to solving all of our IT issues (there are many as we are all a bit challenged in this area!) cannot be measured and we thank him from the bottom of our hearts. I also wish to thank our records officer Tia Jones who has been working tirelessly going through records to either ratify them or make sure all records are going to the correct people – this really is no small task and she does it for the athletes, so thank you.

So that’s a wrap – there is so much more I could write here but going to save something for next month!