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Renna Nelis

General Secretary

Renna Nelis is the general secretary of Sport Event Team NPO (SET) which organises the biggest mass sports events in Estonia including the Tallinn Marathon. Renna studied Sport Management in Tartu University (Estonia). Since 2000 SET has organised over 400 different sporting events including marathons and other long distance runs, triathlons, ski marathons, cycling events and athletics competitions. SET has been the largest sport events organiser in Estonia for the last ten years. Sport is Renna’s job, hobby and passion. She has run 17 marathons and has completed an Ironman event. She represented Estonia as a torchbearer at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and has been awarded with a special award from European Athletics in 2018 for the contribution to the development of mass sports in Estonia. Renna with her team organised the 22nd AIMS World Congress held in Tallinn in September 2018.

Al Boka

Treasurer

Email: aimstreasurer@aol.com

Al Boka became a committed runner while attending the University of Nevada - Las Vegas. He has run 37 marathons with his personal best of 2:45.05 at the age of 43; just three years after beginning running. Al had spent 22 years in the United States Air Force with more than half of that while living in France, England, Greece, Spain and Thailand. His travels honed his deep interest in worldly matters which became apparent after he began directorship of the Las Vegas Marathon in 1980. As the event grew and as a result of his own running in large international events he began focusing on attracting international participant to Las Vegas. Within 10 years he had grown the foreign attendance from zero to over 1,000. In 1992 the Las Vegas Marathon became an AIMS member. In 1996 he was nominated for the position of AIMS Treasurer by the outgoing AIMS Treasurer, Andy Galloway, and was duly elected. Since then he has developed procedures and policies which define and control AIMS finances. These controls over spending have greatly contributed towards AIMS’ growth from 120 to 470+ members.

Gary Friar

Communications

Email: gary@distancerunning.co.uk

Gary started producing Distance Running back in 1994 and has been working with AIMS since that time developing the magazine and more recently the AIMS website. He is a qualified stockbroker and worked on the Glasgow Stock Exchange floor from 1978 to 1981. He then joined Scottish and Universal Investment Trust (SUITS), a division of Lonrho, working firstly in Scottish and Universal Newspapers heading a team which launched a series of free distribution newspapers around the west of Scotland. He transferred within the group to Holmes MacDougall magazine division as Special Projects director. He published the 1982 Glasgow Marathon magazine and introduced Mars Confectionery to marathon sponsorship, who later went on to be the title sponsor of the London Marathon. He continued to launch and develop other titles within the group prior to starting his own company. In 1990 he set out on his own producing and growing publications for both major brands and owners of niche titles. In 1994 he was approached by an ex-colleague from Holmes MacDougall to get involved in publishing Distance Running magazine for AIMS, which at that time had around 100 members. He helped transform the publication from a black and white A5 yearbook to an A4 quarterly magazine, now with a worldwide distribution serving over 400 members. He also introduced various sponsors to AIMS and continues to develop the magazine and the AIMS web site, which now has over 482,000 visitors looking at 2,589,776 pages per quarter.