Club outing to Birmingham, & a triple record breaking race
- brian17harris
- 11 hours ago
- 8 min read
We held off publishing last week’s report for a few days so that we could include some news still coming in, as well as this Tuesday’s Heddington 5k, which was a club championship race, so we’ll start with that - it was worth waiting for!
Heddington 5k, Tuesday 18th July
This was the last in a series of 3 races over the same course put on in June/July/August by Calne Running club. It’s a bit further away than some of our championship races, but road 5k’s near Cirencester are getting quite hard to find since the one near Gloucester (that used to be in the county road series) stopped. The quality of the field was pretty high (see the winners time below).
{Ed. - I had drafted the following line before the race, but hadnt realised just how true it would turn out to be "So, if you wanted to nab a club 5k age record (like Bill did last month with MV50) this was a good chance." ]
First home in a new MV45 record of 17.02 was club captain Aaron Willis, taking one of David Wright's many pre-carbon records that had stood for an impressive 20 years (17.23).
Many congratulations to Aaron, who has several more road races pencilled in for the rest of the year. With a strong 5k PB under his belt (power of ten only shows a 17.25 parkrun) he must be looking forward to some more good races.
Rich Allen may have been hoping to beat his PB of 17.24 after a good parkrun at the weekend so was slightly disappointed with his 17.34, but it's not long since he was injured so like he said on Strava "slowly clawing it back".
Dave Wright had run this event in June and finished 1st MV60 in 20.33. He produced a remarkable improvement to again finish 1st MV60 by knocking over a minute off - 19.30!
At 82.8%, this was the best age-graded score by one of our runners on the night - fantastic performance Dave !
[Ed. - unfortunately for Dave he would have needed a whopping 87.9% to match the club's MV60 super tough record of 18.23 set by David Wright.]
Brian Harris, had finished 2nd MV60 in the June race in 21.14, and was hoping to improve on that by going under 21 minutes. After a strong first 3.5km the wheels rather came off , and he finished with a big positive split and just a modest improvement to 21.01 (although his watch time was 20.58). In a higher quality field he was also only 6th MV60 despite the faster time.
Charlotte Wilton was spicing up the last few weeks of her marathon preparation with her first proper race since the gruellng man v horse. You can see from her strava comment that racing was a bit of a shock to the system.
"Ouch... 2nd FV50 My lungs have forgotten how to race. Cheeky walk at 2.5 miles, breathing so loud a guy asked if I was OK. Looking forward to getting race fit again."
Even more of a shock was that her time of 22.09 did still break the existing club LV50 record held by Caroline Buck at 22.59. Do enjoy that Charlotte .....whilst Kate J is still only 49 ;-))
This was Kate Kilby's first chance at the LV65 record of 28:37 held by Ruth Fulford. Having run 25.28 for the Ciren parkrun at the weekend beforehand (after a late night out at the Athletics in Birmingham) a new record was very much on the cards and indeed Kate was successful in comfortably reducing it to 25:07– congratulations to Kate, who only has Liza's 20 mile and marathon records to break to achieve a clean sweep of the LV65 records.
The full results are below, but we've also added the age-graded scores which shows how some records were harder to break than others.
1 Toby Loughlin (Team Bath AC) 15.05
10 Aaron Willis (Cirencester AC) 17.02 - club V45 record 82.5%
15 Rich Allen 17.34 80.0%
37 Dave Wright 19.30 – 1st V60 82.8%
48 Brian Harris 21.01 78.2%
62 Charlotte Wilton 22.09 – club FV50 record 73.0%
79 Kate Kilby 25.07 – club FV65 record 77.6%
114 finished calnerunningclub.co.uk
The updated standings in the club championship after these results can be found here
Whilst the leaders (Brian Harris/Pam Wheeler) haven't changed yet, they can both definitely still be overtaken by several other runners with only 3 more races to go (see last week's report for when/what those races are). NB - marathons run before the date of the last event (the Cirencester HM on 1st November) will also count, including Abingdon in October for instance, so if you haven't yet run a marathon up to 80 additional points are still up for grabs.
European Athletics Championships in Birmingham Monday 10th – Sunday 16th July
After booking their tickets almost a year ago, and despite not everyone being able to take up their seats, a dozen or so from the club did meet up to watch from the very top of the upper North stand on Friday evening. We were treated to 4 track and 2 field finals as well as events from the first day of the heptathlon.
There were no GB golds unfortunately to celebrate that evening - Zharnel Hughes’ silver in the 200m and Keely Hodgkinson’s silver behind new star Audrey Werro in the 800m were the GB medal highlights.
Several members attended elsewhere in the stadium and/or on different days – let's hope some of them/us were inspired enough to up our own game over the rest of this season.
Special shout outs go to Ruth Fulford, Ann Sherrington and Kate Kilby for getting up to run a parkrun the next morning, after the late journey back home.
Unity 5km Challenge, Birmingham
Jo Musk and family were also at the European Championships on Friday and Sunday, so making the most of their weekend, her son Brecon donned a club vest to race as she explains
"Brecon ran in the Unity 5k in Birmingham on Saturday, an event run as part of the European Athletics Championships, run on the marathon course from earlier in the day. I was supposed to run with him, but couldn't due to injury. Initially, the expectation was that one uncle would step up, but he ended up with a dream pacing team - his 3 uncles and his cousin (all 4 are very good runners - the uncles ran between just over 17 minutes and low 19 minutes at Cannon Hill parkrun the day before and his cousin is a speedy middle distance track runner). Brecon ran 22:48, not far off a pb, on an extremely tough hilly course so the pacing team (and Brecon) certainly delivered!"
1 James McCrae (Mansfield Harriers) 15.20
506 Brecon Musk (J) 22.48
1431 finished birmingham26.com
Back for the final athletics session on Sunday, Brecon was thrilled to spot Jimmy Gressier. Jimmy was kind enough to give him the number he had stuck on for his medal ceremony. It was great to see the athletes generally interacting with young fans - who knows how many future track and field stars will have had their running journey kick-started like this.
Racing on holiday
We also had news via Dorian Matts that one of our juniors took the chance to race whilst on holiday in France (although they’d forgotten to pack their club vest ;-)).
Tippi Brown's mum says “She loved it!! Was very very surprised to be first in her age group, as lots of athletes from French running clubs.”
Well done Tippi – hope you had luggage space for the trophy and goodie bag.
15 August, Tignes Trail, France, 2.9km trail (juniors)
1 Eliot Monnier-Benoit (Besancon, France) 12.46
19 Tippi Brown (Cirencester AC – junior) 16.52 – 1st FU16
48 finished tignes.net/agenda/evenements/tignes-trail
Two Tunnels Marathon – Bath, Sunday 16th
Charlie Clarke was going well to around the 35km mark in an event he’s done before, but unfortunately cramp set in and he had to walk most of the rest. He was still the 1st MV70 (of 2).
It was his first time running a marathon with his son, who’s training for a 100km race. Their Strava time of 4:37 (official gun time 4:43:45) was quite some way behind Charlie’s V65 record of 4.11.46, but having turned 70 this year, he may well be worrying Dick Waldron’s V70 age record of 4:25:17 on his next marathon outing.
Ramsbury Gold 10km, nr Marlborough, Sunday 16th
Long-term running friends (and lifetime members) David Wright and Keith Firkin were both in action in a trail 10k.
“Another brutal course found by Keith,” observes David, “but at least it wasn’t muddy (!) and there was beer at the end “
Well done to David for another V60 1st, and to Keith for finding a race with beer to finish.
1 Harrison France (Marlborough RC) 38.21 (chip 38.18)
23 David Wright (Cirencester AC) 49.24 (49.17) – 1st V60
67 Keith Firkin 54.25 (54.18)
325 finished racinglinerunning.co.uk
PARKRUNS 15th August
Best performance of the week was Rich Allen winning at Berkeley (mostly in and around where you park for the Fission 20-miler, so a good fast surface). Despite non-carbon shoes and a rather twisty course, he finished in 17:41 - a good training run for the Heddington 5k (see above).
First man home for the club at Cirencester was Chris Fox, just getting back into parkruns again (he was sub-18 minutes in his “youth” ;-)). Charlotte Wilton was first lady home for the club and 3rd lady after her "first pacy run in a while".
Quite a few of you were parkrunning whilst on holiday
The Stickneys were at Newby Bridge in the Lake district – beautiful views adding elevation to the event.
The Leggates were at Matlock in Derbyshire
With definitely the best-named event of the week ("Piggly Wiggly") Luke and Annie Campbell were also the furthest afield, visiting family in South Africa. Great to see their club vests in action.
Here’s Luke’s commentary (bear in mind S. Africa is pretty much 6 months different to the UK in terms of the seasons).
“Freezing leaving the house. Warm up was mostly up hill. Everyone at the parkrun warning ‘the brit’ about how big the final hill was. One bloke kept shouting “Come on Busy Park…”. One lady is doing Tetbury parkrun in 3 weeks. African parkruns are notorious for people starting too fast, especially when downhill initially. Including 8 kids under 10, 3 of which were in crocs. Went the wrong way once but otherwise good. Hill was a beast. 2nd to Molapo, but the camel beat the elephant (Ndlovu means elephant). Great fun.”
Cirencester: 26 Chris Fox 21.32, 33 Charlotte Wilton 22.20, 38 Ben Francis 22.52,58 Paul Timms 23.55, 83 Kate Kilby 25.28, 96 Jonathan Higgs 25.54, 122 Gary Wood 27.12, 124 Susanna Austin 27.20, 130 Brendan McCarthy 27.35, 216 Samantha Timms 31.52,246 Richard Edwards 33.51, 283 Ruth Fulford 37.10, 330 finished.
Swindon, Lydiard Park: 51 David Moss 23.40, 120 Corinne Clark 26.50, 433 finished.
Tetbury: 104 Rob Tuttle 29.07, 271 finished.
Gloucester City: 137 Ann Sherrington 30.12, 236 finished.
Berkeley Green: 1 Rich Allen 17.41, 134 finished.
Carterton, Kilkenny Lane: 113 Gordon Jones 32.49, 163 finished.
Witney: 33 Martin Croucher 23.15, 263 finished.
Meon Valley, Wickham, Hampshire: 63 Stephen Hale 26.00, 270 finished.
Aberbeeg, nr Abertillery, Wales: 27 Alan McAdam 25.01, 39 Rachel McAdam 26.09,115 finished.
Matlock, Black Rocks: 154 Bill Leggate 28.31, 218 Kirsty Leggate 33.16, 284 finished.
Fell Foot, Newby Bridge, Windermere: 36 Clare Stickney 22.12, 393 finished.
Piggly Wiggly, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: 2 Luke Campbell 21.09, 190 finished.
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