It might not be part of the Friday 5 series, but for many the Brantham 5 Mile is the last Friday 5 of the summer. We had a great turnout at the race, with eight runners completing the undulating route around the village of Brantham. First home was Craig Slocombe, who continued his good form since joining the club, finishing ninth overall in a time of 30:07. Craig was followed home by Stephen Bullen (32:36), Matt Illsley (35:34), Malcolm Statham (35:38), Chris Smith (35:57), Lesley Moss (43:30), Sarah Blewden (45:54) and Alison Clarke (50:49).
Saturday marked the first weekend of the school summer holidays and amongst the usual local parkruns we had finishers at:
- Gunpowder parkrun, where Simon Leggett completed the 2 ‘and a bit’ lap course in 24:12;
- Talkin Tarn Country Park parkrun, where Chris Warren completed 2 laps around the woods, fields and tarnside paths in 19:52;
- Thornham Walks parkrun, Suffolk’s newest parkrun, where Mel Willsmore completed 2 laps of the mixed terrain course in 40:49; and
- York parkrun, where Matthew Grant completed 1.5 laps of York Racecourse in 30:44.
This weekend saw the Castle Howard Triathlon and Multisport Festival taking place in Yorkshire. A trio of Great Bentley runners were there to take part, including Yolande Arnold who won her age category in a time of 1:06:58 in the 10k event. Paul Arnold and Vicky Presland also made the trip to Yorkshire to compete in the half-ironman distance, but due to the volume of water on the roads the bike leg was cancelled, leaving them both to compete in the Aquathon instead. Vicky finished in a total time of 2:32:07 and was the fourth female and first V40 to complete the race. Paul also did a fantastic job and completed the course in 3:07:57.
However, the main event of the weekend was the Ipswich Ekiden, which saw teams of six take on many, many, many laps around the grounds of Ipswich High School to cover 26.2 miles in total. Great Bentley were out in force and a total of eight teams competed overall where we finished 6th in the men’s vets competition, 7th in the over 60s competition, and 7th, 21st, 29th, 34th, 49th and 54th in the mixed open competition. You can see the full results online, but special mentions must go to “The Fantastic Team 4” for their win in our annual intra-club competition, as well as Doug McGillivray (36:54) and Josh Beaumont (37:18) who were both in the top 20 for men’s 10k times out of 249 men.
Great Bentley Running Club 