Last weekend saw club members taking part in events hosted by two very popular race organisers. Close to home the White Start Running Cider Frolic 12-hour endurance event took place on Saturday 30th July, with regular participant Rob Murr accompanied by regular marathoner Georgina Brice both completing enough laps to make the marathon distance on a hot and humid day. Rumour has it that cumulative fatigue set in as the laps progressed, but it couldn’t be confirmed if cider played any part in this. Georgie finished in 6h28m and Rob in just over 7 hours.
Quite a bit further afield we had several ultra marathon die-hards in the Montane Lakeland 50 mile and 100 mile trail ultra. Despite the name it doesn’t involve an uncountable number of loops of the baking section of that well known high street store, but was a run through some of England’s most beautiful scenery in the Lake District. Contrary to the dry spell in the south, there is no danger of a hosepipe ban in the Lakes and the weather was doing its best to further top them up over a largely wet couple of days.
We had two starters in the 100 mile event but Ali Bisatt had to withdraw, leaving Martin Webb to make his way around the tough and hilly course in an excellent 32h36m.
The ‘shorter’ 50-mile event had 6 club participants taking part. Robin Upton was first back in 10h56m, followed by Mark Wilson in 13h40m and then evenly spaced about an hour apart we had Matt Price over the line in 14h43m, Sue Lewis in 15h44m and Andy Higham and Matt Blee finishing together in 16h35m.
The club also had representation at 5 parkrun venues, Longrun Meadow with 26 club runners as always having the most participants. parkrun tourist locations included Cranbrook Country Park, Torbay Velopark, Winchester and Donaupark in Vienna, Austria.