Racing
Serpentine organises participation in many different races and leagues throughout the year: road races, weekend relays, triathlons, track & field leagues, cross country races, trail races and lots more. For many of the the major races, leagues and championships, Serpentine often pays the entry fees and organises teams. The vast majority of races, however, are entered individually by Serpies with no involvement from the club. When entering races, always specify your club name — SERPENTINE — and race in club colours.
To plan your future races look at the Serpentine Race Planner, which tries to list all the running, triathlon, duathlon, cycling, cross-country, track & field events that could be of interest to Serpies in the coming months. Use MyEvents to see who else is racing and tell others you are going.
Many Serpies travel far and wide for racing, particularly for marathons and Ironman triathlons. If you're going to a foreign race and they ask for a medical certificate, there's a template in our Health & Fitness section.
Club Championships
A number of races — covering all the major disciplines and distances — are selected as our club championships. See the relevant pages in the road, track and triathlon sections for details.
Travel Incentives
The club encourages all our members who have reached the required standard to compete in county, regional or national championship races, as this increases the profile of our club and should help to improve standards in the longer term. As an incentive towards this, the club will pay the travel costs, subject to the current expenses policy and subject to a cap of £50 per claim, for all members who get onto the podium (1st, 2nd or 3rd male or female) and/or make a scoring team (1st, 2nd or 3rd male or female team) in the following competitions (examples from 2012):
County championships (road, track and field) e.g. Middlesex Indoor T&F Championships, Middlesex half-marathon
Regional championships (road, track and field) e.g. SEAA T&F Championships
RunBritain Grand Prix races e.g. Swansea Bay 10k
England Athletics championships (road, track and field) e.g. Boddington 50k ultra, Senior Combined Events Championships, Bristol 10k
UKA championships (road, track and field) e.g. McCain Mountain Running Challenge
BTF national championships (triathlon and duathlon) e.g. Milton Keynes Sprint, Shropshire Standard Distance Triathlon
ITU and ETU championships e.g. World Age-Group Standard Distance Triathlon Championships
BMAF vets championships (road, track and field, per age-group) e.g. Ashford 10k, Tiptree 10 mile, National T&F Championships Solihul
Notes
Members must compete in club colours to be eligible, unless required to wear county or home-nation kit to meet competition rules.
Members achieving podium places in the above races should make a claim using the expenses form in the normal way, subject to approval from the Competition & Team Events Coordinator, who should also be contacted in advance if there is any doubt about the eligibility of any race or competition.
Claims are subject to the current expenses policy sections 2d-2i e.g. members must pay the first £10, members are expected to travel by the cheapest sensible option.