August is now behind us and we enter the last throes of the summer before the nights start drawing in and the mornings get chilly again – it must be time for another newsletter!
News and Notices
Parkrun social – 13 September 2025
Well done to those of you who made their way to Felixstowe for our August social parkrun. For more seaside fun, the last of our summer parkrun socials is taking place on 13 September at Harwich parkrun. It’s just up the road, so come and join us for a social run and a cuppa afterwards!
Cross country (XC)
Cross country events will start next month – where has the year gone?!
NESS Cross Country League
The provisional fixtures for our main XC league, the North Essex and South Suffolk (NESS) League, are currently as follows (noting that some dates/venues may still change due to venue availability):
- Sunday 26 October 2025 – hosted Ipswich Jaffa RC
- Sunday 16 November 2025 – hosted by Springfield Striders RC
- Sunday 30 November 2025 – hosted by Great Bentley Running Club*
- Sunday 7 December 2025 – hosted by Braintree and District AC
- Sunday 15 February 2026 – hosted by Halstead Road Runners
- Sunday 22 February 2026 – hosted by Harwich Runners
*In particular, please save the date of our race (30November), as we will need lots of volunteers to put the race on as well as a team of runners.
More details will be emailed to members prior to the first race but, in short, these are approximately five mile races where senior men and women run together in one race, and you just turn up on the day in your club kit if you want to run.
Essex Cross Country League
Our runners are also eligible to compete in the Essex Cross Country League (county events). These tend to be on a Saturday, have separate races for men and women, and must be entered in advance by individual runners (more information on how to do this will be provided by email).
The provisional fixtures for the Essex League are:
- Saturday 25 October 2025 – at One Tree Hill, hosted by Thurrock Harriers and Pitsea RC
- Saturday 8 November – at Hainault, hosted by Ilford AC
- Saturday 22 November – at Hadleigh (Essex), hosted by Leigh-on-Sea Striders and Southend AC
- Saturday 10 January – at Hilly Fields Colchester, hosted by Colchester Harriers and CATs
- Saturday 7 February – at Gloucester Park, hosted by Basildon AC
County Cross County Events
Other county XC events coming up are as follows. We’ll send emails about each of these once entries open:
- Saturday 11 October 2025 – team XC relays at Hylands Park, Chelmsford
- Saturday 13 December 2025 – Veterans (40+) County XC Championships at Epping Forest
- Saturday 3 January 2026 – Essex County XC Championships at Gloucester Park, Basildon
Club Kit
A note for new members – you will need a club top to run in cross country events (and ideally also other races you enter as an affiliated member). Don’t leave it too close to the time to order it! You can complete visit our website to see prices and complete the form to place an order, or contact Barbara Law via the GBRC Facebook group or see her at a training session.
Trail Runs
Details for round 4 of Rodger’s trail runs are now on our website. If you’ve done the other three rounds, don’t forget to complete this one (starting from Holbrook) by the end of the month to claim your t-shirt!
However, please don’t share the route on Strava until after the month has ended and make sure you submit your total elapsed time and not your moving time! For those looking to compete for the male and female trail run shields, the results for rounds 1 and 2 are now on the webpage and it’s looking close up the top of the leaderboards!
Awards Night – save the date – Saturday 17 January 2026
Following the feedback from our members, the club’s annual Awards Night will take place on Saturday 17 January at Colchester Rugby Club.
We expect the cost to be around £23 per person which will include a buffet and professional DJ. There will be a bar to purchase beverages and, of course, the usual giving out of awards and club championships.
Please save the date in your diaries so you can join us for an evening of fun, socialising and celebration!
Interclub 10-mile race – Sunday 4 January 2026
The date for this annual 10-mile road race, in which we compete against Harwich Runners for the interclub trophy, has now been set. Save the date and enter on the day for what is always a fun morning out, on a fast and flat course with PB potential, or a lovely opportunity to marshal and support your fellow club members.
Great Bentley Half Marathon – 1 February 2026
Another save the date! Our annual half marathon raises the funds needed to keep our club going with all the benefits we get from our membership, so please save the date to give a few hours of your time back to help put this event on. Please don’t enter when entries open on 18 October, and tell your friends from other clubs to get in quickly if they want to enter before it sells out!
Submitting race results
We love hearing your post-race updates and celebrating your results, and these go into our regular race reports and monthly newsletters.
After recently trialling submission of results via whatsapp, the Committee has listened to feedback and returned to the use of the Facebook pinned monthly post for results (all other whatsapp groups in the GBRC community are still going strong, this only relates to the ‘Tell us what you have been up to’ group).
The Facebook post can always be found in the ‘Featured’ area at the top of the GBRC Facebook group. Please do post your results, ideally with a photo, to keep our race reporters and your captains informed!
If you prefer, you can also submit results and photos via email: gbrcracereports@gmail.com (although we are currently have some technical issues accessing this account, so please use Facebook for now, if you can!)
Club champs and performance standards
I wanted to take this opportunity to make newer members aware of a couple of the ways we like to celebrate individual successes among club members, which may not be immediately visible when you start running with us:
- Club champs – The club champion for each distance is the fastest person in each age group for an officially measured race between from 11th November 2024 and 9th November 2025. Club champs are awarded at our annual Awards Night in January. If you have a time you wish to be considered, notify Paul Davison via Facebook or email GBRCraceresults@hotmail.com within a month of the event.
- Performance standards – To motivate members to compete in races and work to improve their times, the club operates an awards scheme based on National Running Standards. The ‘performance standards’ are Star Awards ranging from 1-5, with times required to achieve each award. These times for each age/gender category can be found on the webpage. To claim a standard, email gbrcstandards@gmail.com with full details of the race and evidence of your time. The Committee are re-introducing awarding printed certificates for performance standards in the near future, to be given out on Wednesday club nights, to add to the celebration!
Training
As most of you are now aware, training sessions are now managed within the Whatsapp community. Simply join the groups of the sessions you are likely to attend, and click “going” on any events you intend to attend once they have been created each week by the session leader.
Training for each week is also available on our website, and our Autumn overview of training will also be available there shortly. Please start to look out your high-vis clothing and lights to stay safe during evening sessions as the nights draw in!
Our Thursday interval sessions on the track at the Northern Gateway Sports Park will be restarting on this week on Thursday 11 September, and our friendly club night on a Wednesday at Great Bentley with options for intervals or stretching continues year-round.
What the ladies did
It’s always fun seeing parkrun tourism ramp up in the summer months and August has been no exception. You ran parkruns in faraway places including the Eden Project, Cornwall (Katie Collin), Old Railway Trail, Llangollen (Donna Parker-Evans), and Eastbourne (Mary Taylor). Where a parkrun was cancelled or not at a convenient time, we also saw some tourist ‘not parkruns’ in Holyrood, Edinburgh (Caroline Searle) and Barcelona (Lorraine Adams).
Representing the ladies at the Essex 5k Championships at the Colchester Sports Park was Inga Hayden-Cooper, finishing in 24:22 and 6th in her age category. 17 August was a particularly busy day for local races, with the club’s Geoff Day Memorial 5k race taking place on the same morning as the popular Clacton 10k and half marathon. Lisa Briggs (writing awkwardly about herself in the third person) took the ladies title at Geoff Day, and five ladies (Jennie Stemp, Katie Collin, Leoni Harvey, Ella Harris and Emma Levett) took part in the Clacton 10k. Two (Cheryl Congram and Zoe Wolff) braved the half marathon option at Clacton, in typically warm conditions on the seafront. Well done all!
Further afield, Helene Tyler didn’t let the summer heat deter her from taking on the longer distances! She completed the LDWA’s Calderdale Crawl, 24 miles of undulating hills, with her sister. It definitely sounds like I would need to crawl to get round that – well done Helene!
Ladies Runner of the Month
Our ladies runner of the month announcement is a heartwarming mother/daughter tale. This inspiring lady joined forces with her daughter Bethanie to complete Run Sandringham 24, a 24-trail hour race comprising multi terrain 5-mile laps around the Sandringham Estate until the time runs out. They finished this event in 3rd place in the female pairs category by running an amazing 80 miles between them both. Our Runner of the Month for August is …
Melanie Moore!
What the men did (by Jon Mann)
August was a relatively quiet month for races but there were still a few Bentley men out there going for it. Also, in a few short paragraphs time you get to see who has earnt the coveted ‘runner of the month’ title for August.
First up we have the Essex 5K championships where Gavin Byrne raced his way in the Great Bentley Hall of fame with a blistering time of 16mins 14secs. Men’s captain Charlie Keith and Billy Hamilton both put in solid times of 19mins 34secs and 17mins 56secs respectively, Billy’s time was also a personal best.
At the other end of the race spectrum, we have the SVP50 (Stour Valley Path) where Doug McGillivray flew round the course to take first place in a time of 4hrs 10mins 31secs. Club chairman also took on the course and did so in a time of 5 hrs 11secs a time which secured him 10th place. There is a slightly longer version of this course (double the distance) which Rob Dyer decided to undertake, which he did so in a time of 12hrs 38mins.
Although it was possibly his least favourite race experience Mark Crittenden ran at the Mayflower 10K and despite the distinct lack of organisation (on the organisers behalf) Mark still managed a respectable time of 1hr 19mins.
Next up we have our very own Geoff Day memorial 5K, the sun shone, and the race was well attended. As always on the fast, flat lanes of Great Bentley some great times were achieved with Flynn Eyre being the fastest male on the day with a time of 17mins 44secs.
On the same day there was the Clacton 10K and half marathon, some great times were achieved even though the conditions were typically hot and breezy. Gavin Byrne took 4th place in the half marathon with a time of 1hr 18mins 17secs. David Jones and Mark Crittenden also ran in the half marathon their times were 2hr 36mins 37secs and 2hrs 45mins 41secs. Steve ‘Bullet’ Bullen in the 10K race scored a course pb with a time if 39mins 50secs this time also secured him 1st in his age category, Gerry Gladden also did a great time in the 10K with a time of 44mins 14secs.
Dan Palmer took himself off to a new 10k race held at Wembley called the Asics LDNX. The course itself which begins inside the stadium looked decidedly tricky with lots of loops and dead turns, but Dan still whipped round in a time of 49mins 32secs.
Men’s Runner of the Month
This month’s runner of the month is a familiar face within the club and attends any club event that he can and has been a solid member of the club for many years now.He has just recently completed his 50th different Parkrun location which is no mean feat. This year he has also been putting in some impressive times on Rodgers trail run series and there have been some tough courses this year, which is why Phil Presland is this months ‘runner of the month’ well done Phil well deserved.
Great Bentley Running Club 