The first race of the week was the final race in the club’s Mickey Edwards series. You can read the race report and see the final results here. Many congratulations to Stewart Baggs, who became the 2023 winner of the series!

On Friday evening, the fifth race in the Friday 5 series took place in Stowmarket, and 8 blues took part. They were: Rob Dyer (35:31), Jonathan Briggs (37:46), Caroline Dyer (40:08), Donna Harris (45:37), Laura Cook (47:36), Mark Harris (47:41), Bee Harris (49:51) and Frank Gardiner (50:08). Sophia Dyer also did herself proud in the 2k junior race, finishing in 13:43.  Well done everyone! This coming Friday, we will round off the Friday 5 series in style with our race, widely acknowledged as the best one in the series!

On Saturday, 45 GBRC members completed a parkrun. With no sign of tiredness the morning after their Friday 5, Laura Cook and Bee Harris continued their run of parkrun tourism, visiting Milton Keynes and finishing in 31:48 and 31:51.

Other tourists included Josh Beaumount, finishing second at Great Yarmouth North Beach parkrun in 23:32 (which I think confirms what we already knew about this being the hardest parkrun in the UK!)

Further afield, Rob Blackman finished second at Land’s End parkrun in 20:10. However, prize for furthest away parkrun goes to Debs and Paul Hollidge for the second week in a row. They ran fast enough not to get eaten by a bear at Nosehill parkrun in Calgary, Alberta.

You can view full parkrun results for the club on our consolidated club report.

On Sunday, Charlie Keitch completed the Bewl 15 mile, a challenging route through trails and country lanes around Bewl Water Reservoir, in 1:52:55.

Scott Young and Claudia Keitch were also busy on Sunday, enjoying the ‘Wickham Trails’, which is a 9.25 mile self-navigation trail race around Wickham St Paul. They finished in 1 hour 38 minutes.

In Poland, Magdalena Komorowska completed ‘Górski Półmaraton Pętli Tatrzańskiej’, meaning ‘Mountain Half Marathon of the Tatra Loops’, which sounds as if it was as challenging as the name suggests. Mags described it as a ‘XC half marathon’, which will probably divide readers down the middle as to whether it’s going on their bucket list or ‘absolutely not ever’ list! Anyway, the mountains, tree roots, sand and stones were no match for Mags, and she finished as second lady in 2:22:40. You’ll hear her arriving back in the UK with all that metal in her suitcase!

Multi-sport season is now in full swing, and Vicky Presland placed third lady in the Gosfield Lake triathlon (standard distance) on Sunday, completing a 1.5k swim, 40k bike and 10k run in 2:45:58. Vicky has really mastered the swimming and cycling to complement her already strong running, but apparently it’s best not to take any transition tips from her for the time being! Well done Vicky!