A is for Amsterdam, B is for Bruges, C is for … Cabbage

· by · in Race Reports. ·

It was another fully-packed racing weekend but with the vastly different weather conditions. No caps or sunscreen required this weekend!

On Saturday, 46 GBRC members ran at a parkrun event. You can look at our results in full on the consolidated club report, but here are some highlights:

  • At Colchester Castle, Ashley Spooner bagged a new PB of 21:56
  • Mark Jasper was the first finisher at Clacton, only 7 seconds off his PB
  • Andrea Markwick was 1st in her age category at Clacton (27:25)
  • There was a strong blue turnout at Highwoods parkrun for Katie Whymark’s 50th parkrun and ribbon run for the charity ‘Sands’. Katie even achieved a PB (45:21), as did Rob Dyer (21:27).
  • Stephen Walsh touristed at Littlehamptom Prom parkrun on the south coast, finishing in 24:17
  • Paul and Debs Hollidge visited Bushy Park, the home of parkrun, along with 1300 other runners. They finished in 610th and 612th place (I don’t know who came between them!) in 27:49 and 27:50. They enjoyed the spectacle of the event and managed to avoid the rutting deer!
  • Team Oakley went up the coast to Lowestoft parkrun with friends. Lowestoft was recently mentioned in a ‘top 10 parkruns’ feature on ‘Countryside’ thanks to its sea views and friendly atmosphere. Robin finished in 22:15 and Meera was 3rd lady in 23:21.

Not forgetting our junior members who parkrun on a Sunday, Charlie and Connor Sharp finished in 4th and 5th position at Colchester Junior Parkrun, both with new PBs of 8:07 and 8:38 respectively. Xander Briggs also completed the run in 13:58.

On Sunday, we had four finishers in the Chelmsford marathon. The first blue home was Matt Browning, making his marathon debut in a cracking time of 3:38:29. Our other fantastic runners were Malcolm Statham (3:51:52), Tim Clifton (4:43:23 – and on the 1304th day of his run streak!), and Fiona Gosling (5:22:45).

In the half marathon, Craig Slocombe was 9th in a field of 780 runners, with a PB of 1:20:43. There were also PBs for Gerry Gladden (1:34:22) and Darren David (1:58:24). Magdalena Komorowska completed it as a marathon training run in 1:50:39 – pretty quick considering she seems to have run in jeans!

Paul and Debs Hollidge completed their weekend of tourism with the delightfully-titled ‘Cabbage Patch 10’ (a 10 mile event named after the Cabbage Patch pub in Twickenham) in a time of 1:30:21.

Three blues raced the AJ Bell Great South Run, a popular 10 miler held in Portsmouth and part of the ‘Great Run’ series. Daniel Palmer achieved a new PB of 1:16:42, and Laura Cook and Sammy Cotton continued their busy season of racing, finishing together in 1:47:17.

The Keitch/Young clan enjoyed an extended family outing to Manchester for the half marathon. Their times were: Charlie Keitch – 1:24:49, Scott Young – 1:56:46, Gary Howard – 2:23:46 and Claudia Keitch – 2:24:16. Scott was pleased to finish comfortably under the 2 hour mark, and Charlie was pleased to keep the younger generation at bay.

Even further afield, on the continent, Leoni Harvey was pleased to complete the Bruges half marathon in 2:29:22 after struggling with injury. She dedicates her medal to paracetamol and KT tape! In Amsterdam, 18 weeks of hard marathon training paid off for Sarah Blewden, finishing with a brilliant sub-5 hour time of 4:54:40.