Rob Farrow (1955-2025) and some Parkrun PB's

Rob Farrow (1955-2025)

David Wright paid this tribute to Rob Farrow, a member of the club in the early 1990s, who has sadly died suddenly this week, at the age of 70. 

“Rob was a good athlete, with a best 10km of 34 minutes, but his strength lay in triathlon.  He was one of the first club members to gain an England age-group vest, competing in the World Championships in 1993 in the 35-39 age group.  Along with Bob Ferris and Ian Sadler he helped to instigate the club's Sunday evening swim sessions, and he was very active on the social committee.  However, he will probably be best remembered for his legendary dance floor routines at the club's social functions of the time.”

On the roads

What do you do if you wife wants to do a long-distance shopping trip – book a local half marathon obviously! On Good Friday, David Wright ran a two-lap road course at Westonbirt (not on the arboretum trail). He found it a decent course although a bit lumpy, quite windy and a 180 degree turn on each lap, which is never pleasant.  His run went well, keeping an even pace throughout, and picking off lots of runners to . {Ed. – hope the shopping trip wet well too}.

Westonbirt House Half Marathon

1 Adam Holland (Tavistock AC) 1.13.56 (chip 1.13.55)

22 David Wright (Cirencester AC) 1.33.58 (1.33.53) – 1st V65 (and 3rd V60)

280 finished

On the trails

Marathons run by members every weekend in April was by Martin Croucher. On both Saturday and Sunday, he clicked his marathon counter forwards with relaxed riverside run at Walton-on-Thames – described by the organisers “Phoenix Running” thus

“This is one of our timed events where you choose - from 5km to 10k, half to marathon to ultra, you can complete as many, or as few, laps as you like of a 5.3km, 3.28 mile, out and back, course along the beautiful river Thames. We welcome all abilities of runner - complete one lap and you're both a finisher and a winner in our eyes, or keep going and see how far you can get in the full-time limit and everyone gets the fabulous bespoke finishers' medal. Not sure? Well the beauty of this format is that you don't even need to decide in advance - simply come and run a lap and see how you feel on the day and keep on going if it feels right. Minimum distance is 3.28 miles or as far as you can go in 7 hours. Off road trail, the terrain is riverside towpath. The overall course has no elevation gain / loss making this a flat and fast route.”

19 April 2025, Indomitable Potion Marathon

1 Alan Barnes (100 Marathon Club) 3.33.42

9 Martin Croucher (Cirencester AC) 5.05.47

30 finished

20 April 2025, Unbreakable Potion Marathon

21 Martin Croucher (Cirencester AC) 5.45.06

36 finished 

In the Parks

{Firstly, just a gentle reminder, please make sure that you have Cirencester AC entered into your Parkrun profile if you do want your run to be picked up in the club report. Two members weren't picked up this weekend at Ciren plus one pacemaker may have lost her barcode? }

Whilst Parkrun HQ maintains they are not actually races, from a performance viewpoint this weekend saw three club runners all finishing inside 19 minutes, over 3 different courses :-

·       Rich Allen (76%, just 5s off his PB in his first hard run for 8 weeks, also a 25th milestone),

·       teen Ben Clarke (75%, on vacation I’m guessing)

·       Ollie Campbell (71% on his 350th milestone)

earning them all a top 5 place.

Multiple family groupings enjoying the spring weather helped form the largest club contingent for a while at Cirencester in a larger than usual field of over 300 {plus Neil Broadley and Phil Davey marshalling instead of running}.

There were two husbands and wives (Jones and Timms), two mums with offspring and one pair of sisters (Charlotte Wilton arguably pausing her rehab routine to run with her sister over from NZ).

Two of our juniors, with mums in tow, logged PB’s

·       Having only started attending juniors section a few weeks ago, Jessica Jacobs tried out her first ever Parkrun – proud mum Kate wasn’t expecting to get all the way round.

·       Brecon Musk, who has featured in despatches several times over the last few months knocked out yet another big PB – mum Jo is no longer having quite such an easy run to keep up!

Many congratulations to both of them.

Casey Vatcher also had a good run, improving his PB set in January by 47 seconds – his marathon training looks to have paid dividends over the shorter distance.

Cirencester: 

3 Rich Allen 18.30,

14 Casey Vatcher 20.40 (PB),

38 Ian Moore 22.38,

49 Brecon Musk (JM10)(PB) 23.31,

51 Jo Musk 23.33,

57 Paul Timms 23.54,

81 Rob Tuttle 25.48,

115 Gordon Jones 27.30,

133 Charlotte Wilton 28.10,

190 Samantha Timms 30.26,

200 Amanda Naylor 31.21,

219 Rachel Jones 33.07,

242 Ruth Fulford 35.00,

247 Jessica Jacobs (JW10)(PB) 35.41,

248 Kate Jacobs 35.41,

312 finished.

Tetbury: 

25 Edward Knight (J) 22.50,

50 Stephen Hale 25.31,

52 Alan McAdam 26.28,

72 Rachel McAdam 27.41,

190 finished.

Chippenham: 5 Ollie Campbell 18.10, 467 finished.

Trelissick, Truro: 4 Ben Clarke (J) 18.33, 307 finished

Marlborough Common: 42 David Moss 24.27, 252 finished.

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COMING UP NEXT WEEK

Amongst other events, we’ll be reporting on our runners in the Boston, London and Manchester marathons, so the report might be out a little later than usual, but hopefully still on Sunday. If you want to share how you get on, even a picture, please let us know as soon as you can – see https://www.cirencesterac.com/results. for contact details.