February catch-up inc. Dursley Dozen heroes and Bourton/Ciren 10k's
- brian17harris
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
The last regular weekly report before the editor’s holiday was published on 1st February. This is a catch-up report covering the next 3 weeks to 22nd February.
*************************Cross-country series***********************
Newsfeed items have kindly been posted by Dorian Matts covering the cross-country events on 7th and 14th Feb (Cotswold Farm Park and Pittville Park).
A short item confirming the consequent position on the club championships for 2025/26 was posted earlier today here
****************************Parkruns**********************************
Full results are on the usual website page. With apologies for any PB’s or other milestones not mentioned, the most obvious two things to highlight from the last 3 weeks are a win for Ollie Campbell in Tetbury on 14th February in 18.19, and the 600th parkrun by Rachel and Alan McAdam at Cirencester on 7th February.
The Mcadam’s can’t have known when they started their Parkrun adventure in 2011 that their 600th runs would coincide with the Cirencester event’s 8th Birthday. Nor that Parkrun would be suspended for 70 weeks due to Covid.
However, it was indeed a double celebration with Rachel (I assume not Alan?) preparing a batch of Hare cookies to share. In a nice touch fellow club member and volunteer Cathie Cowell was there to give them both their finish tags – see photos below courtesy of Susann Austin.
As Rachel said “we felt like celebrities for a while!”.
**************************Road Racing*****************************
On Friday 6th February the awards ceremony for the 2025 Glos county raod race series was held in Gloucester (postponed from January due to, as it turned out, unfounded fears of terrible weather).
Picture below are our medal winners, including as far as we know for the first time ever a club member winning the Open category (Kate Jacobs of course). Congratulations again to all our winners!
Women Open: 1 Kate Jacobs (Cirencester AC) 65pts.
Women FV45: 1 Kate Jacobs (Cirencester AC) 80pts (maximum).
Women FV60: 1 Karen Higuera (Cirencester AC) 79pts.
Women FV65: 1 Kate Kilby (Cirencester AC) 79pts.
Women FV75: 1 Ruth Fulford (Cirencester AC) 50pts.
Men V40: 1 Rich Allen (Cirencester AC) 76pts.
There were no road events we’re aware of in the first two weeks, but on 22nd February we had three Bourton 10k, Cirencester 10k, as well as the Osaka marathon in Japan.
The very popular Bourton 10k is once again of the events in the club road championships (not the county series), and as usual a decent number of members managed to secure an entry.
First home for the club was Mike Hobbs in a very strong 37.44 , following on from his successful HM outing 3 weeks earlier. {Ed. – I ran the MK marathon behind Mike in 2024 when he sadly just missed out on a London GFA time. His Bourton 10k time of 80% age-graded suggests a significant improvement since then, although we all know extrapolating can be risky. Good luck anyway Mike with the rest of your training for London this year.
Congratulations to Kate Jacobs and David Wright for winning their age groups. Both are nearer the older end of their 5-year ranges, and both rated almost 83% on the 2025 age-grading.
Fairly recently joined member Dave Wright (kindly agreeing to use his shortened forename to try and avoid confusion with the more venerable David) enjoyed his first proper outing in a club vest, and currently looks to be the clubs’ fastest MV60. Pipped on the line by a Gloucester AC runner given the same time, Dave would have bagged 9 points if this had been a county series race.
1 Matthew Lock (Witney Road Runners) 31.21 (chip 31.20)
84 Michael Hobbs (Cirencester AC) 37.48 (37.44)
110 Kate Jacobs 38.34 (38.31) – 1st FV45
167 Andy Fellows 40.25 (40.15)
199 David Wright 41.45 (41.36) – 1st V65
235 Dave Wright 43.04 (42.51)
329 Keith Firkin 46.59 (46.50)
368 Rachel Ranger 49.15 (49.02)
539 Amanda Naylor 58.52 (58.26)
554 Pam Wheeler 1.00.21 (59.54)
628 finished www.bourtonroadrunners.co.uk
The organisers of the inaugural Cirencester HM followed on and put on a 10k in town, sadly clashing with the club-organised Bourton race, but still attracting almost 900 participants.
Congratulations to Clare Stickney who finished 2nd lady.
1 Harry Barnes (RAF) 33.41 (chip 33.40)
41 Casey Vatcher (Cirencester AC) 40.47 (40.44)
78 Clare Stickney 43.45 (43.42) – 2nd lady
90 Ben Francis 44.29 (44.25)
152 Elysia Harrison 47.46 (47.34)
256 Chris Miller 51.57 (51.25)
321 Susanna Austin 54.01 (53.24)
371 Isabella Stickney (J) 55.33 (55.17)
376 Tanya Everett 55.49 (55.11)
435 Jocelyn Randall 57.45 (57.08)
535 Angela Hilditch 1.01.05 (1.00.10)
Finally on 22nd February, one of our overseas members, Sophie Chudley, who most of you will know is based in Sydney, Australia, competed in the Osaka marathon (for her local club, thus not included in our UK results).
Sophie had run a very impressive 2:47:33 last year in Boston, but knocked an amazing almost 7 minutes off that to finish in c. 2:40:36 (strava time), a clear new PB. With every one of her first 14 km at faster than 6 minute mile pace, she admitted she "may have gone out too aggressively", and paid slightly for that over the last 10k. Her awesome time would place her around 7th in the women's marathon UK senior (not vet) rankings - many congratulations again Sophie.
************************Trail races********************************
Dave Musgrove took on the 12-13mile “Terminator” race at Pewsey on 22nd February, finishing 3rd MV50 and well up the field 18th out of 378. Not sure whether Dave’s brief strava comment - “not as muddy as you’d expect” – was a thumbs up or thumbs down?
The week before (Feb 15th) a fairly small but formidable group of members turned out for the ever-popular Dursley Dozen. Last year Cirencester AC swept the board, winning all three team prizes – mens ladies and mixed.
This year we “only” won the ladies and mixed team prizes - we were one man short of the 4 needed for the men’s team this year.
First home was Rob Forbes in 5th. Claiming to have “forgotten how to run uphill” after all his time off injured, he was a little slower than last year.
Aaron Willis improved his position by one place from last year to finish 6th. Both Rob and Aaron won their respective age groups.
In the open ladies event, fantastic runs from both Storm Trow and Helena Sexton (awarded the same time) saw them take 2nd/3rd podium places. Supported by Kate Kilby (who won her own age category) they just held off Witney to win the ladies team event.
Above photo of 1st 3 ladies from Stroud Times - thanks to Rob Forbes for highlighting it.
With two of the fastest men and fastest women, the mixed team event was an emphatic win (over the host club Dursley).
Congratulations to all our runners on a very successful day for the club – and especially to any members reading this – make a note for next year and lets’ see if we can do the clean sweep again!
15 February 2026, Dursley Dozen, 12 miles trail
1 Charlie Worsfold (Dursley RC) 1.24.12 (chip 1.24.12)
5 Rob Forbes (Cirencester AC) 1.28.37 (1.28.36) – 1st V40
6 Aaron Willis 1.30.44 (1.30.43) – 1st V45
27 Storm Trow 1.39.44 (1.39.37) – 2nd lady
28 Helena Sexton 1.39.44 (1.39.37) – 3rd lady
240 Andy Hindson 2.11.18 (2.11.03)
330 Kate Kilby 2.23.11 (2.22.51) – 1st FV65
502 finished
Teams: Men (4 to score) 1 Dursley RC 74pts, Cirencester AC didn’t close in
Women (3 to score) 1 Cirencester AC 383pts, 2 Witney Road Runners 396pts
Mixed (2 men, 2 women to score) 1 Cirencester AC 64pts, 2 Dursley RC 297pts
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