Some things are really worth the wait and the finish of a 100-mile race must rank very highly amongst them, as two club members discovered last week! As well as that incredible example of persistence we also had runners at two of the country’s best loved and well attended races, the Bath Half and the Great South run.
Starting with those last two events, the Great South Run is a firm favourite in the running calendar and it takes place over a flat course around Portsmouth and Southsea. It starts and finishes in the same place on the seafront in Southsea before meandering past various landmarks of the area including HMS victory. A 10-miler is not a common race distance and can be tricky to judge, falling somewhere in between 10k and half marathon pace. Our trio of runners at the event managed to produce very good results, lead home by Ray Tutton in 1:15:20 and then followed back in close succession by Chris Adams (1:32:23) and Peta Aspden (1:35:36).
The Bath Half is a hugely popular race and has been the first foray into half marathon distance for many people in the region. That wasn’t the case for Nick Brazcliffe who has represented the club regularly throughout the year and made it around the gently undulating course in 1:45:27.
The leap from half marathon to 100 miles is unimaginable for most people, but Running Forever has an increasing group of crazies who enter races over distances which would put plenty of folks off driving them! Robin Upton and Sam Wharton are two examples of this interesting breed, whose decisions saw them at 9:00 on Saturday in Goring for the Centurion Autumn 100-miler. The course is four equal distance switchbacks (if you don’t go off course…) in the environs of the Thames valley, returning to base camp every 25 miles. Getting back to the race HQ must be a relief, but it takes increasing amounts of willpower to return to the course as the race progress. Robin and Sam ran the first half together at an incredibly quick pace before settling into their own paces for the final two sections. Robin was targeting an incredible sub-20 hour time and continued to hit the necessary pace to eventually finish in a brilliant 19:52:04. Sam was targeting sub-24 hours, and the quick early miles had given her a great buffer. A truly awful yet heroic and character building final 25-miles, which increased to 27 miles after a navigational error, saw her crush her target to finish in 22:33:29. Both Robin and Sam got the coveted ‘100 miles – One Day’ buckle as a fine reward for their efforts. I’m sure Robin and Sam were both very appreciative to club members Fintan Murray and Mark Wilson for accompanying on the final 25 or 27 miles.
Exotic sounding parkrun course of the week was Dallas Burston Polo Club, which instead of being the kind of place you may find some Texan oil barons is in reality near Leamington Spa. We also had runners at Clevedon, Coventry, Parke, the challenging Woolacombe Dunes course and a decent showing of 27 at Longrun Meadow.