Several club marathon age group records were broken in London last weekend, but the runners have been too modest to flag them themselves.
Starting from the exclusive "Championship area", Sophie Chudley’s 3:03:39 not only beat her own target for the race, but set a new FV45 record by a huge margin, making her our all-time second fastest lady over this distance, only behind Wendy Jones (Nicholls). Well worth the trip from Australia.
Second lady home, Jo Musk PB’d to improve her own FV40 record by >7 minutes, and 7th in the club all-time list.
In the MV65 category, Nick Wall persevered in the increasingly windy conditions to take 8 minutes off his own record.
Recently joined member Charlotte Wilton was revisiting the course where she had started her campaign to win the elusive six-star Abbott marathon majors medal. After running New York way back in 2003 in around 4:30, almost 20 years later she discovered the majors challenge, and duly ran London in 2021, followed by Boston, Berlin, Tokyo and finally Chicago last Autumn, where she took possession of the coveted six-star medal.
Having completed every marathon since 2021 in 3:30 or less, Charlotte was determined to maintain this impressive record at the weekend. She was on track for a PB until mile 20, when bad cramps set in, but she toughed it out to just sneak inside the 3:30.
Not sure whether any more marathons are in her diary just now, but if Sydney gets added to the masters circuit, that new seven-star medal could be hard to resist?