Two recent traditions were upheld in last week’s set of races. 1. The racing week was kicked off on the Wednesday by two of our regularly competing triathletes, Sally Tuer and Simon Rowland at the Cromhall Sprint Triathlon, and 2. Sally won her age category! Also on the Wednesday, Emily Macaulay travelled a short distance down the M5 to race the Exeter 10k, motoring her way to the finish in 55m19s.
We had competitors in a diverse set of events last week, but closest to home was the firm favourite the Piddlewood Plod, returning after a covid break on what was a bit of a scorcher of a day, so much so that the race start time was brought forward an hour to 10:00. The race starts and finishes at Thurlbear primary school and the pupils there play a major part in it, designing and making the medals and generally getting involved with the event, half of the proceeds of which goes to the school and the excellent cakes on offer ensure this is a large total! First back for the club was Ben Timpson in an excellent 10th placed time of 44m51s. The full set of club results were Andrew Saunders (45m44s), Ali Bisatt (49m47s), Ron Foord (53m23s), Phil Sorrell (55m15s), Pete Richards (56m03s), Simon Rowland (58m31s), Richard Mackrory (1h00m), Matt Blee (1h01m), Lisa Denson (first club lady 1h02m), Emily Macaulay (1h04m), Jamie Hill (1h06m), Richard Hill (1h07m), Steph Andrews (1h08m), Nadine Prouse (1h09m), Katie Baker (1h11m), Sherri Dingle (1h15m), Emma Salter (1h16m), Adrian Troake (1h16m), Dan Devlin (1h19m), Paula Bisatt (1h24m) and Gerri Fagan (1h24m).
This year was the first award of a trophy by the Piddlewood Plod race organisers in memory of RFRC Member Adrian Edwards, which was won by Pete Richards.
Also locally, we had four runners in the Blackdown Beauty run. This event isn’t timed so Bev Collins, Jane Cooke and Peter Hall had as much time on the 18 mile route as they wanted to take in the beautiful sights of the Blackdown Hills and a rather nice looking cream tea! Emily Macaulay completed the short route.
Emma Greig travelled to the Pennines for the Pennine 39 NAV4 Adventure. This hilly but beautiful route does what few ultra marathons achieve, and actually comes up a couple of miles short of the advertised distance, but still manages to pack 5500ft of climbing in the route. Emma is well-known as a fantastic walker in the club, ‘Emma Greiging’ even being recognised as a very fast walking style and she used that to good effect, marching around the course in 11h44m.
Furthest afield this week was Matt Price, who has been undertaking a series of very challenging (see: bonkers) races this year. The latest was the E51 Panorama Trail in the shadow of the Eiger, 51kms of very lumpy but breathtakingly beautiful alpine trail and forest path taking in over 9000ft of climbing, and a very scary looking footbridge which just about clings on to a cliff edge. Matt completed the amazing event in 11h16m.