Over the bank holiday weekend club members were involved in some truly epic events including a race across a whole country (well, principality), another taking in not one but three countries, and an old and a new Somerset Series race.
For the second year in a row RFRC had representation at the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) series of races. Following in Robin Upton’s footsteps from last year, Sam Carden ran a hugely impressive 17h48m in the 100km CCC (Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix) race, starting in Italy and traversing through Switzerland into France across incredibly challenging terrain totaling over 20,000ft of climbing.
The longest races of the weekend were the combined offering from Raidlight Trail Running of the King Offa’s Dyke 185-miler and Mercian Challenge 100-miler. The distances are already scary enough but with both races being largely in Wales there were also plenty of mountains and hills to negotiate. Given the challenge, Ali Bisatt doing the King Off’s Dyke route and Sandra Moffatt taking on the Mercian Challenge, did fantastically to get through the majority of each course but both withdrew, much to the relief of their support crews!
Marathon addict Georgina Brice was in back-to-back marathon action completing numbers 107 and 108 this week. With her incredible persistence it won’t be long before Georgina hits her double century!
Regular racer Sally Tuer was the sole club participant at the Severn Bridge Half Marathon. The multiple crossings of the bridge makes this a deceptively hilly event but Sally was on good form and finished as age category winner in 2:01.
The Somerset Series is the backbone of many runners race diary for the year and it’s great to have it back almost at full strength in 2022. The weekend had races on the Sunday, the Battle of Sedgemoor 10k, and Monday, the Baltonsborough 5 miler. Unusually for the series these were both road races which offered the chance of some quick times for club members.
We had 10 entrants for the Battle of Sedgemoor 10k, and first back was Wayne Windebank in 41:39. He was followed in by Don MacPhail (48:42), Simon Rowland (50:06), James Palmer (51:43) and Richard Mackrory (52:40). First club lady back was Katie Baker who cracked the one hour mark in 59:54, with Dan Devlin (1h03:45) crossing the line slightly ahead of Tracy Marshal (1h03:50). Rounding out the combatants in this battle were Richard Hill 1h05:17 and Rachael Jones (1h22:04).
The Baltonsborough 5 miler is new to the Somerset Series this year, but we still managed to have a trio of competitors taking part. Ben Timpson lead the club members home in 32:06. Kevin Garner was age category winner in 41:27, and Sally Tuer got around in 44:25, a solid effort the day after her Severn Bridge race.
It’s still holiday season and we had quite a variety of parkrun locations this week – including Ashton Court, Minehead, Killerton, Fell Foot (Cumbria), Swansea Bay, Drumpellier (Glasgow), University Parks (Oxford) and Frogmary Green (Ilminster). Back in Taunton we had 20 runners at Longrun Meadow.