It ain’t HALF been a big week.
We had 18 runners at our latest club championship event, the Chippenham Half Marathon and to date I’m aware of 8 of you attaining a PB. Chris Hunt, John Wilmott, Luke Davies, John Hible (under 90 minutes), Laura Midwinter, Katharine Burrett, Kathryn Roynon, Rachael Dark and Lois Norcott (under 2 hours). Well done everybody.
It was also a half marathon PB for Dave Aplin at the New Forest half, finishing under 1:40 for the first time.
It’s worth remembering that sometimes the best race you can have is not to race at all. So with that in mind, congratulations to Julian Thornhill for stopping when he felt trouble in his knee during the New Forest Half Marathon. We all wish you a speedy recovery
Jo Gill took the marathon option at New Forest finishing in 3:54. Jo loves a marathon and often seems to finish between 3:50 and 4:00. That’s some excellent consistency.
The shortest race of the week award goes to Dave Mackie with a quite frankly lazy 10.5 mile Grisedale Horseshoe Fell Race. Up and down Helvellyn in the Peak District. It also looks awful.
And in the longest race of the week, Damian Hall was at the 170 mile Ultra Tour Monta Rosa starting in the Swiss Alps. He only managed to do half of the race, but that was because it had to be called off for safety reasons. 2 foot of snow fell in a few hours.
However, in a bittersweet twist he was leading the race by around 24 minutes at the checkpoint so he took home the win. Well done Damian, they all count!
And finally, it was the last of our summer away runs this week. We concluded exactly as we have done for the last couple of years with a choice of 4.5 – 6 miles from the Quarryman’s Arms. And as usual, the sun was shining and a great time was had by all culminating in a stop at the pub at the end.
Our thanks to Dave Mackie, Natalie Inman, Stewart Unsworth and Chris Hutton for organising the away runs and to innumerable group leaders who’ve been willing to take a merry band of runners and take responsibility if they got lost.
While there are no more summer away runs left it does mean that our Full moon runs start again this month so grab your headtorch and join us for more adventures.
