CAPTAIN’S NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2026 | Great Bentley Running Club

Welcome to the June newsletter.

I hope you’re all enjoying your running, whether you’re chasing a new personal best, training for an upcoming challenge, or simply enjoying the social side of being part of our wonderful club.

June has certainly been a busy month, with members taking on everything from 5ks to marathons, triathlons and ultras, often in some very challenging temperatures.

Before we look back on all your successes from June, we just wanted to highlight a few events that are coming up:

Our GBRC trail runs continue with the second event in this year’s series taking place from Capel St. Mary. Details can be found on our website.
Our social walks, organised by Vicky Presland, have proved very popular and are a great way to catch up outside of training sessions. Keep your eyes peeled for future dates and details.
The annual Essex Way Relay is taking place on Sunday 6 September and we’re still looking for people to take part. See the full details on Facebook.
The Bentley vs Harwich 5k relays are taking place on Sunday 20 September. Details will follow as soon as we have them, but please keep the date free in your diary.

Essex County Champs 2026

There was a fantastic turn out of Blues at the latest Essex County Championship race at High Easter 10k including:

Lou Balfour
Steve Bullen
Ash Coles
Donna Harris
Mark Harris
Inga Hayden-Cooper
Debs Hollidge
Paul Hollidge
Youur handsome men’s captain, Charlie Keitch
Magdalena Komorowska
Jon Mann
Bev Shortley
Chris Thornton

It would be great to see lots more of you at the remining championship races:

The Arthur Whiston 5 Mile on Sunday 19 July
The Essex 5k County Championships on Friday 7 August
Pleshey and Essex Marathon on Sunday 13 Septemeber
Tiptree 10 on Sunday 11 October

Highlights from this month

Paul Arnold completed a full ironman at The Long Course Weekend Wales, completing the marathon in the fantastic time of 5:11:27 after a 2.4-mile sea swim on the Friday and a 112-mile cycle on the Saturday. Well done, Mr Chairman!

Yolande Arnold put together a solid training block leading into her Long Course Weekend marathon, but an injury close to race day threatened to derail Yolande’s preparations. Despite that setback, she battled through to record a superb marathon PB of 5:22 on a hot and hilly course.

Bee Brent is making excellent progress over the 5k distance, with some standout runs at Micky Edwards, and her marathon training is also going extremely well. Great work, Bee!

Richard Hudd was at Endure 24 in Reading where he took part as a solo runner and completed 13 laps, smashing his 100km target for the 24 hour race, despite the rain and mud.

Andrea James continues to put in the hard graft with her training and her consistency continues to deliver results, with a particularly strong run at Boxted 10k where she also picked up some well-earned silverware.

Claudia Keitch continues to go from strength to strength over 5k and has been steadily smashing her personal bests. Her latest achievement was a superb 22:35 at Harwich parkrun.

Larina Marsh completed the Beyond London Ultra on what was another exceptionally hot day, finishing in an impressive 8:00:38.

Vicky Presland also tackled the Full Ironman distance over The Long Course Weekend, recording an outstanding 4:31 marathon on the final day after completing both the swim and cycle disciplines earlier in the weekend.

Phil Presland also proved that Preslands don’t do things by halves by doing the, er, half at The Long Course Weekend in a new course PB of 1:54:22.

Craig Slocombe continued his return from injury with a string of good results at Micky Edwards. Craig was the only runner to increase his time in every race of the series (sorry, that’s a July spoiler), which is even more impressive when you realise all the rest of his runs have been at a very easy pace (well, easy for Craig).

Mary Taylor took on the challenging Orwell Ultra in extremely hot conditions.Describing it as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Mary demonstrated incredible determination throughout the event, and even after suffering a fall, she picked herself up and carried on to the finish.

Chris Warren was at Boxted 10k, where he completed the undulating off-road course in 41:51 and took home the prize for first V50 despite taking a wrong turn which cost him at least a minute.

Scott Young completed his 400^th parkrun at Colchester Castle. Since he completed his first parkrun in 2013, Scott has run at 35 different locations in three different countries and covered a distance of 2000km, with 1300 of those being at Colchester Castle parkrun alone. Well done, Scott, that’s a lot of times up that bloomin’ hill!

Welcome to our new members

A very warm welcome to our newest members:

Sarah Jane Bennett
Emma Gosling
Dr Dave Parry
Shannon Ryan
Martin Spencer
Julie Willats

Please introduce yourselves at club nights. We’re a friendly bunch and always happy to support fellow runners.

Men’s Runner of the Month

Our Men’s Runner of the Month is Tim Clifton.

Tim’s highlights include:

Completing the Stour Valley Marathon for the fifth year in a row, finishing in 6:18:07 and beating last year’s time of 6:30:59 by a whopping 12 minutes on a very tough course.
Tackling the Orwell Challenge Marathon and crossing the line in 6:05:18, showing just how consistent his pacing is over these longer races.
Reaching his 200th parkrun at Colchester Castle.

Whether it’s parkruns or marathons, Tim has kept on turning up and getting the miles done. Well done, Tim.