Hi everyone,
Luke has asked me to write this months newsletter, so here goes in my maiden report. Its Sunday when I’m drafting this and I’m sat at home watching the first rain that we have had in a while, it’s making quite a nice change to the blisteringly hot sun, it comes to something when 23 degrees seems cold! Luke meanwhile is cycling the ride 100 round London and Surrey and  overall, I’m content being sat here to be honest.

This month has seen some excellent performances from a number of you and has included the culmination of the Micky Edwards handicap; I need to thank Luke and Phil Presland for organising and sorting the results for this along with Chris Warren and Michael Simmons as well as the many of you who have given up your time to marshal around the course. We’ve also had the Ekiden race organised by the Ipswich Jaffas on a really hot Sunday with a really close finish in our own race within a race. Last Wednesday also saw the 4th running of the Geoff Day memorial 5k race which was run   in almost perfect conditions as a result we got some really quick times run. Finally, the month started with our Friday 5 race which was won in a cracking time of 25:06 by Colchester Harrier Ramadan Osman, this again showed how well we put on races which wouldn’t look so straight forward without the efforts of Chairman Russ, Secretary Paul and the tireless Rodger Alexander – thanks fellas!

So first congratulations to Dave Jones who was the winner of the Micky Edwards series – well done Dave, its a great series to win and shows a great improvement of time over the 4 handicap runs.  The Geoff Day race saw Ryan Day set off at a pace and establish a big lead but this was reeled in by the ultimate winner Adam Smith who crossed the line in 17:32 (Adam also recorded the fastest Micky Edwards time). We had 11 male runners break the 20 minute barrier in the Geoff Day race which is brilliant considering runners like Dave Wright, Dave Goldsmith and Chris Warren weren’t running!  It was a nice touch seeing Ryan hand over the trophy to Adam at the end.  The Geoff Day race is a fantastic event and I think epitomises everything that is good about our club including the feast afterwards.

So onto Ekiden where we had some 60 runners in ten teams taking part in the marathon relay; there were premature celebrations from Paul Hollidge and his team after some initial manual calculations, the ultimate winners being “cherry picked for speed” – well done to them.  I mentioned that Ekiden was a hot day well that didn’t stop Tim “The Machine” Ballard setting another personal best and entering the club championships with his 10k time of 39:21.

July also saw some of you doing those mad distance events (that’s from me who thinks that 10k is a very long way!) – Charlie Keitch who has been training like a man on a mission completed that mission with a 5th place finish at the Race to the Stones – a 100k trail run over 2 days, a superb effort and a result that shows that you will reap the rewards of the training that you do.  John Bush also doubled up with the “Shark Run”  at Sawbridgeworth; which included him falling over and sustaining a few cuts and bruises but that didn’t stop him knocking out 6 laps at the superb Spitfire Scramble the following day (that’s a race that I need to get back in the diary – it really is a great 24 hours!).  John Booty not to be outdone did 24k up and around Pan Y Fan which included 3500ft of accent, in boots and a 20kg bergen which he did in an impressive time of 4 hours and 51 minutes.

Its been another quite month for new members, we did see a potential new face in Steve Walsh at the Geoff Day race which is a good day to have seen the club at its best so hopefully we’ll be welcoming him as a fully fledged member shortly.

Performances of note this month include a couple of winners – Paul Connell won the inaugural Brightlingsea 10k in a cracking time of 38:01 and Rob Blackman crossed the line first at the noncompetitive but timed parkrun in Clacton in 19:08; Tim Ballard came 9th in the Brantham 5 mile in 30:17 which is a silver standard (Tim’s collection of standards just seems to be growing at the moment) and Paul Hollidge at Felsted 10k ran a PB of 44:34 set on what was advertised as fast and flat course and was anything but and in temperatures that just sapped energy.  Well done to you all fellas!

Finally I want to mention some of our juniors who ran at Ekiden too, so well done to Connor and Charlie Sharp who along with Evie Foster and Laci Wakeling came 7th overall in their category – well done boys!

**Sunday 5th August club run change**

Just for those who haven’t seen this already a reminder that the club run on Sunday the 5th August will now be joining Jennifer Aylen’s run in memory of Ben Quartermaine and to raise money for the RNLI. 8:30 from Frinton Golf Club to Clacton Pier and back. 10 miles, or you can turn back earlier or even join the run further along! Jennifer is encouraging a £5 donation to the RNLI, which I know quite a few people have already done!

Runner of the month
So Luke and I had our monthly dispute; aka chat via messenger; regarding runner of the month, I didn’t realise that when I became vice captain that this decision would be so hard each month which is a testament to you all putting in some great performances. This month we considered Dave Jones, you do only win Micky Edwards by putting in regular great performances, Charlie Keitch again his performance at the Race to the Stones had to be admired and Adam Smith for some great times over the clubs 5k races.  However, there is one guy who has been knocking out some phenomenal performances over a period of months this year and has seen a couple of standards this month along with personal bests on what seems like every time he races well done Tim Ballard, runner of the month for a July.