Dear AARC Members, Happy New Year! On behalf of the Board of AARC, I wish you health, happiness and great running in 2010 --whatever your running and fitness goals! The Board and Committees of AARC are hard at work planning activities and events to start the New Year off with a bang! I’d like to highlight just a few upcoming activities (be sure to read through all of them)...  January 23 - Winter Party... Our annual Winter Party is set for January 23 in Ambler. A hot buffet, a Runners' Fashion Show (yes – you read that right!), after-dinner dancing and more! The cost is just $15 per person.  BYOB. Please RSVP to the evite that was sent out in December or contact Carol or Rich. We look forward to seeing you there!       Winter Fun Run Changes... We’ve made some changes to the Fun Runs, which continue through the winter. The Thursday night run now meets at the Ambler Athletic Club in Ambler, and we are planning a new location for the Monday night run, beginning in March. Stay tuned for more information! Locations for the Tuesday night and Saturday morning runs remain the same. For schedules and details, check out the AARC home page (www.aarclub.com and click Fun Runs).     Frostbite News...   Our Frostbite 5-Miler will be held on Saturday, Feb. 20 – rain, snow or sleet! This year will mark our second race with chip timing.  The race has grown so much in popularity that we’ve out-stripped the practical capacity of manual timing!  Special thanks to Ira Meyer (frostbite@aarclub.com) who is once again chairing the Frostbite Race Committee and to Dolly Dennery ( sponsor@aarclub.com ) who is our Race Sponsorship chair.   This year's race beneficiaries are Aid For Friends and Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association. Remember to volunteer for pre-race day or race day assignments. AARC will again assist with Broad Street Team registration fees (or registration assistance for other team races and relays) for members who volunteer for Frostbite.  Participation on AARC teams is open to members of all abilities! We encourage everyone to come out and run!  You don’t need to be “fast”…you just have to want to join the fun! And be sure to encourage other runners to register early!  Word-of-mouth is the #1 way people say they find out about our events.      New AARC Feature: "Who Ran?  Who Ran?" Our AARC members-only Online Forum is a great way to stay informed of running events in the area, exchange ideas and information and stay in touch! With so many active (and modest!) AARC members, we don’t always hear about everyone’s race results.  So for 2010 we're instituting a way for you to find out where everyone's running and how they did.  We need your help (and forget the humility!)  Let us know where you ran and how you did, or tell us how you liked the event and whether you would recommend it to other runners.  A picture would be great too.  See my previous email for the web page to visit to provide us with that information, or email me the information.

As you can see, there is a lot going on! These activities and everything else the Club does is dependent on volunteers! If you would like to volunteer for a club committee or would like more information about committees, please contact me at president@aarclub.com. I would welcome your ideas and input on any aspect or program of the club as well.   So once again, Happy New Year to all.  I hope see you at an AARC activity soon!   Sincerely,   Ken Surowitz President