Well what a week it’s been. I’ll save the big one for the end but there has been loads going on.
Some people like to spend the Easter Monday bank holiday sat in the pub, seeing how much chocolate can be consumed or doing something else relaxing. We instead had 5 people heading to Wales for the Gilwern Grunt.
Some people got lost, some didn’t, everyone got back safely and had a great race.
Saturday saw the Bath Beat, a walking event which allows runners and has distances of 12, 17.5 and 27 miles roughly. While there are no official placings, Richard Biggs was first back at 12 miles, Becky Townsend, Helen and John Ashworth were first back at 17.5 miles and Chris was very quick over the 27 mile distance.
No medals at the Bath Beat, but a certificate instead.
Andrew Wood gained redemption for a DNF at the Yorkshire 3 peaks last year completing it this time in just under 5 hours with a huge amount of elevation. He forgot to take any photos though.
Also taking on lots of elevation, as well as jetlag and heat, Damian Hall came 11th in his latest adventure. The Canyons 100K in California.
Normally on a big city half marathon, it can be difficult to find an Evans in the results, but luckily Gareth Evans did the Madrid Half Marathon in a little over 2 hours. Not many Evans’ in Spain.
The Bath Beat wasn’t the only walking event attracting our runners this weekend as Annika Davidson made the short journey to the Pewsey Downaround. An LDWA event, so I can only assume cake was in plentiful supply.
Jo Gill completed her 3rd marathon in April, this time at the Shakespeare Marathon in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her time of 3:57:02 also means all 3 have been within 8 minutes and all under 4 hours.
There was another marathon this weekend with CRC runners. We had 4 runners at the London Marathon. Leading the way was Dan Harman who just missed out on sub 3 hours by 53 seconds. Craig Gingell did the other way around and managed to finish in 3:59:46. Paula Clarke was next in a PB time of 4:30:57. And Jo Motto may not have set a PB with her time of 5:12:26 but she did get a record number of high fives and shout outs. Well done to all of our representatives.
And finally, let’s have a fanfare for the big one:
What a day for Corsham Running Club. Months of planning by the 10K committee, weeks of planning by the army of volunteers and marshalls, a cleaning crew the day before the race, and it all added up to a fantastic day for 1,212 runners and innumerable spectators.
As the day did, we’ll start with the 2K. 190 children towed the start line and by my calculations, 64 of them were either children of our members or members of One Mile Club, a third of the runners.
The 2K was led home by Finley Charlton of One Mile Club in a time of 6:54. That is a 5:45 mile pace. It was a close battle as he just held off Amelia Cox from Crawley runners to win by just 3/10 of a second in a sprint finish.
Amelia Harvey and Bobby Hodge who are both members of One Mile Club and children of our members won the under 9 age category for boys and girls.
All of the runners were finished in under 17 minutes.
At 10:30, the MOD Corsham field gun crew and Matt Garvey of Bath Rugby set off the 1,020 10K runners. It will come as no surprise that the race was won by Simon Nott of CRC (That’s Calne Running Club) in a time of 31:56. And as this race doubled as the Wiltshire Athletics 10K championship race, he had to award himself a medal too.
In total we had 49 runners in the 10K (so 113 including the 2K), including our 7 pacers, who all came in just under their target times (6 within 10 seconds).
Craig Rumble was the first Corsham finisher in a time of 37:39 for 13th place. There were definitely PBs for Christopher Sapiano (who beat his Dad), James Shaw and Renata McGrath but I’m sure there must have been more.
We had some excellent performances and both our mens team and our ladies team were 3rd place in the teams results. Our 4 men were all under 40 minutes and the 4 ladies were all done in a little over 50 minutes.
The 2K race had 111 girls and 79 boys and the 10K race had 466 ladies and 556 men. In total this gave us 47.6% female racers. I see this as a testament to our inclusive nature and everyone being as important as each other.
Finally, I can’t leave this without thanking the 10K committee, the volunteers from CRC and the rest of Corsham and Neston and anywhere else for giving up their Sunday morning and of course the runners. It isn’t easy to put on the biggest 10K in Wiltshire but it looks effortless on the day.
So thank you to the team and congratulations to the runners, see you all again next April.
