August can sometimes be a bit quiet with lots of people making the most of the school holidays to get away and take a break, but that doesn’t mean it’s been all quiet on the racing front.  Here’s some of the highlights:

• We had great turnout at the SVP50. Doug McGillivray claimed first place and we also won the men’s team prize with Craig Mitchell and Simon Leggett joining Doug on the podium. OK, there may not have been an actual podium, but it’s still a great result.

• We completed parkruns up and down the country in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Yorkshire. We also had runners cross the border to run at Strathclyde in Scotland and Gwynned in Wales, and our men’s captain made it all the way to Denmark for Damhusengen parkrun.

• Adam Robey and Joshua Beaumont also took part in Hare & Tortoise Running’s ‘Outrun’ event at Layer Marney Tower, where Josh completed 30 miles in 5:05:34 in the individual 12 hour event, and Adam completed 13 laps (32.5 miles) in the 12 hour pairs event.

• We also saw some great results at the Essex County 5k Championships. I’d like to give a special mention to Chris Warren who ran a great time of 18:47 and is currently sitting in first place overall in the Men’s Essex Grand Prix tables in his age category. There is still a long way to go in the series and Chris’ age category is a particularly tough one (I’m certainly glad I’m not in it!), but after the first four races he’s put himself into a fantastic position. Well done, Chris.

Coming up in September and beyond

• The Cross Country dates for this year’s ‘North Essex and South Suffolk’ league are now available. The first event is taking place at Writtle Agricultural College on Sunday 29 October and you can find all the rest on our website. It’s always nice to see a mass turnout at Cross Country and if you haven’t tried them before, I’d encourage you to give them a go.

• The glitz and glamour of the annual GBRC Awards Night will once again be taking over Great Bentley Village Hall on Saturday 16 December, followed by a social run with breakfast on Sunday 17. We’ll share more details once we have them.

• Our inter club 10 mile road race with Harwich will take place on Sunday 7 January. This is another great club event and whether you’re running or volunteering, we’d love you to be there.

Runner of the month

This month’s runner of the month is one of our newer members, but he’s certainly been making an impression since joining the club. He’s currently dominating the club champs in the male senior category and during August he was training hard for the Big Half at the start of September (spoilers – he smashed it!). During August he clocked a time of 18:00 at the Essex County 5k Championships, put in another strong 5k of at Clacton seafront parkrun, where he was the second runner home in 18:07, and put in the hard work with a very solid month of training.  Congratulations, Craig Slocombe – you are our runner of the month for August.