Stride magazine - Autumn 2022

Great groups – Harmeny AC

Harmeny AC is a busy athletics club with dozens of athletes of all ages training at Saughton track in Edinburgh. With many parents waiting on the sidelines while young athletes trained, the club saw an opportunity to get them active too – and a new jogscotland group was born! The club’s Kim Kenny tells us more…

I took over the coordinating of Harmeny AC’s jogscotland groups in 2019 and we have seen them go from strength to strength. We run free beginner groups a couple of times a year on Sunday mornings in Balerno to tie in with our main Sunday club run. Each group sees around 20-30 people continue their running journey with us and it’s been fab to see so many runners progress their running from joining our jogscotland groups to go on to run with the club and take part in 5Ks, jogscotland 10Ks, Penicuik half marathons is one and beyond.

Knowing we had around 130 juniors training at Saughton track on Thursday evenings, we thought what better place to start up a new group than Saughton Park? This has proved really popular and has meant not only have we attracted parents who would otherwise be hanging around at the side-lines killing time while their kids train, but also new runners from the local area. We have had 40 people sign up to the new group and only three weeks in I’ve heard chatter of parents contemplating entering cross country alongside their kids in the future, although they are under strict instructions not to come on to the track for a victory lap – which I think is just what we’ll do on week 10!