GBRC and the Wrath of Khan

· by · in Race Reports. ·

The North Essex and South Suffolk Cross-Country League kicked off on Sunday and there was mass turn out from Great Bentley as nearly 40 of you took on this year’s inaugural course at Writtle University College. Conditions were good underfoot save a few puddles and light mud, and it certainly proved to be a fast and flat course for our runners with newcomer Andrea James claiming a GRBC all time Top 10 performance alongside Joshua Beaumont and Doug McGillivray.

Also claiming points on the day were Lisa Briggs, Vicky Presland, and Kathy Bishop for our women, and Jacob Horton, Mark Jasper, Craig Mitchell, David Wright, Paul Davison, and Stephen Bullen for our men.  However, every single runner contributed to the final result which sees us sitting in fourth place overall in Pool A. The next race in the series is at Gosfield School on Sunday 26 November. Be there or be, well, warm and dry, presumably.

Whilst our ladies Captain and Vice-Captain led by example at Writtle, the men’s duo of Rob Dyer and Charlie Keitch were conspicuous by their absence.  Both were, however, in action at parkrun on Saturday morning where Rob finally broke the 20 minute barrier in 19:50 at Damhusengen parkrun in Denmark to claim a fantastic new 5k PB, and Charlie completed Blickling parkrun in Norfolk in 19:49, as he completed his 44th different parkrun course.

Alongside our local parkruns we also had finishers at:

As always, you can see our full parkrun results for Saturday 28 October in our consolidated club report (alongside some people who haven’t updated their club details yet. Yes, I mean you, Paul Connell. Well done, by the way).

Also opting to hit the tourist trail this week were Sammy and Martin Cotton who completed the Malaga Half Marathon in 2.25.32, and Tom and Mags Komorowscy who completed their first Snowdonia Marathon in 4:18:22 and 4:04:17 respectively. Meanwhile, John Booty was representing Great Britain at the ICF World Canicross Championships 2023 in Leipa, Germany, where he and Khan competed in the Master Men II category, finishing in 17th place overall in the two day event. Huge congratulations to them both.