“Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get” 

I’ll start this month with news of Tim Clifton, for whom life couldn’t be less like a box of chocolates. With Tim, he knows exactly what he is going to get. In June Tim hit his Gump Day. 1169 consecutive days of running. That’s 3 years, 2 months and 14 days of running. Great work Tim. If you know how many miles you have covered over that period I’d love to hear it. 

It’s been another busy month of running for all you chaps. The local parkruns have been strongly attended with a GBRC pacing event at Highwoods for the English beginning of the NHS 75 years celebrations. I know some of you were very pleased to have beaten Mr. Parkrun himself that day. We also had a social morning parkrun at Clacton, followed by breakfast and in some cases a cheeky game of crazy golf on the pier. Other parkruns covered this month were the new one at Thornham Walks, Swansea Bay, Wimpole Estate, Sale Water, Burnham on Crouch and (the furthest one I’ve seen in a while) Clover Point, on Vancouver Island. 

You have been out and about racing like crazy too. The Harwich 5k series and 3 Mickey Edwards 5k runs all happened in June. 5 mile races include the Maisie Fun Run, the Friday Night 5 in Springfield and the similarly named (but unrelated) Friday 5 series races in Framlingham, Bury St. Edmunds and Stowmarket (more on Friday 5 later as we are hosting our own run this week). Half marathons in Swansea and Southend, the Stour Valley Marathon. Then we move onto some races which are slightly different… A 500m knockout event proved very popular with runners being eliminated after each lap until there was only 1 left standing. The Round Sheffield Run, which involved numerous time trials, but then running from one time trial to the next?!? The TFSE Fan Dance, carrying a 25lb pack up Pen y Fan. And finally the Lesna 12 hour Ultra event. The diversity in distances and locations is great to see and always inspires me to look for a new race in an obscure location. 

Looking ahead into July and beyond: 

• We have our very own Friday 5 race happening on Friday 7^th July. We put on a junior race over 1km or 2km, then an adult race over 5 miles. This is the last in the Friday 5 series and there will be a huge turnout from local running clubs who always see this as a great opportunity for a fast and flat race after the previous 5 races with varying degrees of hilliness. 
• The Geoff Day Memorial 5k is on Wednesday 19^th July. This is the e club’s annual 5k race, in memory of club member Geoff Day, who passed away in 2010 and still holds the majority of the top spots of our top 10 GBRC performances. We really want to make this a successful event and celebrate Geoff’s life and love of running. You can go for a trophy, a time (as well as maybe bagging a PB on this flat course) or just have an enjoyable run on a summer evening with friends. This is a great opportunity to get out and socialise with fellow club members with some post race food. There will be another email coming out regarding this race. Please support the event if you can! 
• Ekiden on Sunday 23^rd July. If you are running this event you should have already seen an email from Lisa with details of your team, and the leg that you are running. For those not in the know, this is a marathon distance event covered by teams of 6. 2 legs of 10k, 3 legs of 5k and 1 leg of 7.2k. This is another great social day out, with multiple GBRC teams submitted competing alongside countless teams from Essex and Suffolk. 
• Rodger’s Trail Run series. The June run is over, and now we move on to the second race in the series. You can run this trail any time you like during July. Instructions can be found on the website. I am informed that due to the miles of 8 foot tall stinging nettles on the July course Rodger has made a late change and the new route is a much more pleasant experience. If you haven’t done one of these before I cannot recommend them highly enough. Rodge does such a great job of scoping out these courses and providing trail directions for us all. 
• The next parkrun social on August 19^th. With this being in the summer holidays, there is some recognition that many of you may not be around, or you may have a bit more freedom to go a little further afield. For this reason we have chosen the hardest parkrun in the country for our next social. Great Yarmouth North Beach parkrun is our next destination and while it may be a bit of a trek to get up there, in August it may prove enough of a draw as a day trip destination so maybe we’ll see some of you there. Any female members of the club (who shouldn’t be reading this, it’s the men’s newsletter!!!) are obviously more than welcome. 

Moving on to our runner of the month for June… This is never an easy decision with so many of you putting in so many great performances. However this month there has been one runner who has managed to combine effort, improvement and consistency. You cannot win the Mickey Edwards series without improvement time and again and that points to a standout candidate this month. Congratulations Stewart Baggs, it’s been great to see you cross the finish line at each Mickey Edwards race having pushed yourself each time harder than before. A fully deserved Runner of the Month.