Colchester Sports Park hosted The Essex County 5k Championships on Friday 11 August and ten of our runners were there to take on the fast and flat course.  The standout performances of the evening belonged to Josh Beaumont, who clocked a time of 17:03 and ninth spot on our men’s all-time Top 10 performances, and Inga Hayden-Cooper, whose time of 24:18 earned her an Essex County Bronze medal in her age category.

Our other finishers were Craig Slocombe (18:00), Chris Warren (18:47), Chris Smith (19:57), Matthew Illsley (20:03), Lisa Briggs (20:43), Adam Robey (21:01), Meera Rajoo-Oakley (22:34) and Gary Cooper (31:56).

Alongside the usual swathe of local parkruns, Debs (25:23) and Paul (25:24) Hollidge visited Brundall parkrun in Norfolk where they either crossed the line together or competed in a furious neck-and-neck sprint for the finish. At Wimple Estate parkrun in Cambridgeshire, Matthew Grant completed the single-lap cross-country course in 26:03.

You can see the full parkrun results for this week in the consolidated club report.

Opting to cover slightly more than 3.1 miles on Saturday morning, Hélène Tyler and her sister, Alison, joined The Irregulars,  a walking group with The Long Distance Walkers Association (LDWA), for a 30 mile trek around Bakewell in Derbyshire. Tom and Mags Komorowski also took part in an LDWA event on Saturday, finishing joint sixth in the Shotley Peninsula 50 (yes, that’s 50 miles) in 11 hours and 53 minutes.

This year’s SVP100 and SVP50 took place on Sunday and we were out in force for the 50k event, which was won by our very own Doug McGillivray in the amazing time of 3:58:39. Following him across the line to claim the men’s team prize were Craig Mitchell (5:37:21) and Simon Leggett (5:59:57). Adam Waller-Toyne (6:24;01) was the next Bentley runner to cross the finish line, whilst Caroline Dyer completed her first ultra-marathon in 7:01:27 with Rob Dyer, who followed her home in 7:01:52.

Finally, a special mention must go to our Chairperson, Paul Davison, who completed over 18 miles of the route before having to pull out thanks to an infection from a wasp sting. But, don’t worry, Strava confirms that Paul is already back up and running.