We’re well into December now and a certain time of year was starting to show in the outfits and events club members took part in this week. First race up was the Santa Scramble 10k on Brean Down ‘enjoyed’ by excellent Santa stand-ins Lisa Windsor and Sarah Holloway, who in 1h31m twice had the pleasure of the tough climb up the ‘Down’ during this two-lapper. The real Santa Claus has vowed to stick to squeezing down chimneys – he’s not built for hills!
Later in the day Michael Turk ran the ‘Extremely Jolly 7-miler’ around Escot Park near Ottery St. Mary. This was the first of three Jolly Running events at Escot Park over the two days. On Sunday the incredibly consistent Georgina Brice bagged marathon number 86 in 6h08m, taking her another step closer to her goal of 100 marathons by May 1st next year. She was closely followed home in the Escot Christmas Marathon event (the ‘Jolly’ title seems to have disappeared from the race name by this distance) by Zoe Stainton in 6h32m.
Three further club members took part in the Escot Christmas Half Marathon, Sally Tuer (2h34m), Simon Rowland (2h34m) and Rosie Benneyworth (2h44m), in addition to Michael, Georgina and Zoe, having a great time with the the unique selling point of these races – a mid-race waterslide, the liberal moistening of said slide being under close supervision of supporting club member Rob Murr.
We had a broadly typical count of 24 RFRC parkrunners at Longrun Meadow in Taunton, plus one runner each at Oxford and over in Coole Park, Galway in Ireland.