Last week’s extreme mileage events have given way to more typical distances this week, with one notable exception we’ll get to further down. Club members took part in several races over the weekend, which we’ll cover from south to north, starting in Haldon Forest near Exeter where Helen Prescott finished the Haldon Summer Series 10k May edition in 1h8m.
Moving ever so slightly north to Exeter itself several RFRCers took part in the hugely popular Great West Run half marathon. Leading the crew home were Kevin Garner (1h46m) then the smallest of gaps to Ron Foord (1h47m) and right behind him Nick Brazier (1h49m). Sam Cross dipped well under 2 hours in 1h55m, followed home by Chris Adams (2h10m) and Rosie Benneyworth (2h16m). It was a beautiful sunny day although a little too sunny for the quite hilly course.
Heading a few junctions up the M5 we had a fabulous five enjoying a couple of trail races put on by Prosper Events in the club’s home town of Taunton . We had two entrants in the 10k with great times of 53m36s for Damian Lake and 1h8m for Tracy Marshall. The balance of three club members took on the half marathon. Chris Manley, getting pacier by the week, was third male home in 1h39m, Dee Finch was back a few minutes over two hours in 2h05m, and Flo Bridges running with a friend was around in 2h28m.
Now we move up many more junctions of the M5 and half way up the M6 for the Great Run Manchester half marathon, where Sherri Dingle raced around her old haunts in a PB time of 2h21m.
Finally, heading almost as far north as you can get without the help of a boat we have Martin Webb who is taking part in the iconic Cape Wrath Ultra. A ridiculously long event of 400kms over 8 days, much of it in the wilds of north west Scotland with not even a trail to guide him. This is a properly tough event, which is so long it will span into next week’s race report as well!
Martin is off to a good start, although as you can see from the photo he has taken ‘reversible’ to the next level. I wonder if some locals told him that wearing it that way round was midge-proof (is that even a thing?)?
Plenty of parkrun action this week too – a total of 9 different events. Longrun Meadow in Taunton as you’d expect having the most entrants with 25 taking part from the club. Some of the parkrun events have interesting names, I think this week’s winner is Alice Holt near Farnham where we had 1 runner. Surely someone called Alice Holt will have taken part. The most boring name goes to Parke, graced by 2 club members. Other events with one club entrant were Berkeley Green, Bideford, Cranbrook, Higginson and Seaton, plus Gloucester North was visited by the Timpson family, who have managed quite a bit of parkrun tourism between them.