We were relatively thin on the ground last week but the quality of the runs makes up for that. First off racing regular Sally Tuer was up in Gloucestershire for the 40th anniversary running of the Stroud Half Marathon. It was one of those tricky wet and warm days, never the best conditions for racing but Sally still managed to finish just inside her target time when crossing the line in 2:04.
Ray Tutton is another frequent racer and he was over in Oxfordshire for the Abindgon marathon. This flat fast course is very popular with people trying to achieve good for age times for London, or personal best times in general. The event has embraced sustainability and operates with paper cups for drinking and wooden medals. However that virtuous approach didn’t placate the weather gods and it rained throughout the race! Ray cruised home in a very respectable 3:44.
Longest race of the week goes to the RunWalkCrawl Gower 50-miler over in south west Wales. The 50-miler is the longest of 3 available distances, and includes a complete circumnavigation of the Gower Peninsula AONB. RunWalkCrawl is a brand rather than a racing strategy, and it’s a challenging course but not too tough to see off our hardy trio of Andy Burgess, Andy Higham and Dean Bennett. Having said that, the route include runnning along the entire length of a 4-mile sandy beach which tested their resilience to its limit!
First back for the club was Dean who flew out of the blocks, putting in some incredibly quick early miles which were enough to secure an impressive 5th place finish overall with his 8h36m finishing time.
Running together throughout the day the two Andys completed the epic one lap course in 12h50m.
parkrun was a mix of local regulars and some less frequented venues, for RFRC runners at least. Destinations this week included Brighouse, Burnham, Exmouth, Itchen Valley, Nobles, Penryn Campus, Queen’s Park Belfast, The Great Field (Dorchester) and a round 30 at Longrun Meadow. #parkrun #running #ultrarunning