GO CORSHAM TEAM!
It has been the start of a few weeks of Corsham team events.
But first off, we had the 2nd in the series of the Heddington 5k event and after the disappointment of finishing in exactly 20 minutes at the first in the series last month, Dave Mackie managed to get his time to start with a 1, clocking a 19:45 PB.
We had 7 runners in total and everyone was finished within 22:06. Super speedy running from them all.
Our first team event of the summer was the Avon Valley Runners mob match. Run on the Over the Hills course (but backwards), this year was almost as muddy as the actual race usually is in November. There is a calculation involving your fastest runners placings and then taking off the total number of other runners.
With 31 runners from CRC we took home the trophy we’ve held almost exclusively since 2013 (it used to be separate male/female and Chippenham men won in 2015). Congratulations to everyone who ran as it is a real team effort. And special congratulations to Chris Hutton and Laura Midwinter who were first man and first lady.
Brian Atkins ran the Cheddar Gorge 10K with 2 friends, a good chance to get some serious climbing in.
Annika Davidson was also playing in hills, taking on the 16.5 miles of the Bristol Epic 3 peaks and finishing in a very good time just over 3 hours.
Saturday afternoon saw our latest club championship event, the Broad Town 5. Being over towards Swindon, it’s a good chance to pick up club championship points as only a small number of runners attend, and we had 5 there, led home by Mark Cortaville.
18 CRC members, a few friends and some supporters went on a camping and running trip at Endure 24.
On the Friday evening there is the childrens mini mile which the 3 children completed, Oscar Zalek in about 7:30, while Bonnie Zalek and Amber Fisher ran it together in around 9:30.
Endure 24 is a 24 hour continuous running race on a 5 mile loop, which can be done as anything from a solo runner (with a special t-shirt for those achieving 20 laps/100 miles) up to teams of 8. CRC had 3 mixed teams of 6 runners.
Susan Mackie teamed up with 3 friends to be in a team of 4 ladies, with an inflatable Jesus (who had some adventures) and they wore wimples and called themselves Sisters of Sin; which coincidentally can be sung to the tune of a popular Dire Straits song.
And as well as that we had Dan Inman running as a solo, his plan was to run at least 4 laps. He ended up doing 18 laps in just over 24 hours (as you get up to 25 hours as long as you start your last lap before 24 hours) for a total of 90 miles.
As we had 3 teams of 6, Carl Zalek tried to match the teams up to have a little bit of inter club competition. In the end, they were all pretty evenly matched so it was decided that in true CRC spirit, they’d run the last lap (lap 32) together and the other 15 (and 3 children) would join them for the last 100 metres and finish as a big group.
Officially each team did 32 laps in 24:34:57 to finish 39th – 41st of 247 large mixed teams.
Unofficially, and doing some manual adjustments based on what their actual times would have been, the competition was won by Cors’am Loving Heartbreak Hill (Paul Scotford, Kevin Sandall (Calne SmaRTT), Michael Fisher, Max Luff, Keith Burlison (Sue Mackie’s brother), Chris Hunt) in a time of 24:13; which would have been good enough for 34th.
2nd was Cors’am Going to Drink All the Tea (Jane Tunnicliffe, Michael Luff, Richard Biggs, Nick Maryon, Debra Kearsey, David Mackie) in a time of 24:35
And in bronze medal position just two minutes behind were Cors’am Going to Beat Last Year (Marie Vinolo-Young, Laura Midwinter, Stewart Unsworth, Wendy Scotford, Carl Zalek, Danny Parker)
