October 2010

 

For a complete results
listing view the
Results Index

Featured events this month:

• Rugby 10
• Snowdonia Marathon
• Ladies Midland Cross-Country League
• Birmingham & District Invitation Cross-Country League Race 1
• Birmingham Half-Marathon
• Abingdon Marathon
• Amsterdam Half-Marathon
• Toronto Half-Marathon
• Round Rotherham 50
• Leicester Half-Marathon
• Chicago Marathon
• Loch Ness Marathon
• Midland Open Cross-Country Relays - Melton Mowbray

Rugby 10 - 31 October

13	Pete Fellows		65:40	1st V45 Warks Champs
16	Richard French		67:05
47	Lyn McDonald		74:09
67	Jack Langman		77:27
122	Dave Cooper		90:59
124	Tony French		92:16
134	Fraser Barrett		94:25
141	Abbe Humphries		96:01

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Snowdonia Marathon - 30 October

Thunder, lightning, sleet, hail, torrential rain and many hills. A lovely event - Claudie

Claudie sums up the event well - but forgot to mention the mud. The wind was less than last year but it was a lot wetter - especially just after I finished. I stood sipping tea and eating the excellent biscuits watching the torrential rain and hail and feeling sorry for those still out on the course. Support, water stations and marshalling were very good, although the traffic was a problem in the narrow village lanes.

Overall, the hardest race we have done but a thoroughly rewarding experience - Tony

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Ladies Midland Cross-Country League - 30 October

It was great to see such a big turn out of ladies for the first XC fixture of the league, including some first timers for the club.  For the first time in a long while that I can remember, it felt too warm to be cross-country running! As usual, we had great support up Beacon Hill, and luckily for the ladies laps, the stream didn't seem too muddy or wet!

We are currently 13th Masters/Vets team overall. We need to find a few more senior ladies to join the club - we haven't got enough seniors to make a seniors team!

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Birmingham Cross-Country League Race 1 at Leamington Spa - 30 October

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Birmingham Half-Marathon - 24 October

A great day for me yesterday as I carved over 2mins off my PB, but some aspects of the race need looking at! The start pens and the bottleneck after about 200m were shambolic and I’ve heard reports of people around the 2hr mark taking 5mins to cross the finish line due to the inability to cope with the numbers involved.

That aside the race was great and had a lot of positives – well marshalled, closed roads, fairly flattish course, good drinks stations and for a Sunday morning race, well supported. The weather was cool and still with sunny skies – perfect conditions. With Pete Fellows and Tony Mackness knocking out 86min PB’s at Kenilworth the bar had been raised and I decided to give 1h25m a nudge following a block of consistent training. I got into my stride fairly quickly and by 6miles I was 30 sec up on schedule. My mile splits were very consistent in the middle section of the race and I got to 10 miles still about 20secs up on schedule (and only 15-odd secs outside my 10 mile PB!). The last 5km were very testing and each corner seemed to present you with another uphill to cope with. There was a final rise as we got to Broad Street, and when I knew I’d got my PB in the bag I started showboating to the crowd within the final 200m.

All in all a good day, but until they sort out the start pens I won’t be going back and will stick to the Coventry and Kenilworth halfs - Richard Hodge

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Abingdon Marathon - 17 October

What can I say about this marathon except for "where do I sign up for next year?". Yes, we all ached like crazy at the end but. as the results show, it was a day of great achievements and we all said immediately that we would be back next year!

The day started early and we were greeted with the first frost of the year. The race started at 9am prompt with a loud gun firing us on our way. To be honest I was a little wary as I've only ever done big city marathons with thousands of people jostling for pole position. This was a different kettle of fish, a mere 1,000 runners or thereabout which seemed a bit odd to begin with. However, we didn't have to push our way through the crowds, we just set off and ran on an incredibly flat, well-marshalled and well-supported course. The course was a mixed bag of rural lanes and (posh) business parks but it was a lovely route - never once did I get bored with it.

I'd set my sights on 3.45 as that was how the training had been going but, as we were able to run quite freely, we kept a good pace all the way round. Craig very kindly shouted at me if I slowed down at any point so I had no choice but to keep going, otherwise some of the other runners might have thought we were having a domestic!! I knew that our target was very achievable as we reached 23 miles with about 30 mins to go until the 3.45 time. I couldn't believe the clock when we finally entered the stadium and I'm not sure where it came from but I found the energy to almost sprint to the line. I felt quite overwhelmed at the end!! (and no, Craig and I did not hold hands over the line - maybe we should have though for photographic purposes!).

Treasured moments of the day: seeing Linda's face as she completed her first marathon, Lyn's exceptional time - awesome!, Sean O'Connor on-route supporting us with cheers, gels and more water, Corinna completing the race even though she was very poorly and large plates of roast beef in the pub afterwards All in all, a brilliant day and a marathon that I would highly recommend. Organisation was excellent from start to finish and the t-shirt was one that we would actually wear. Make sure you enter early though if you want to do this one as it fills up incredbly quickly and I can now understand why - Sarah

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Amsterdam Half-Marathon - 17 October

137	Howard Andersen		1:23:02
6269	Priya Thakker		1:58:52

Full results at: www.amsterdammarathon.nl

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Toronto Half-Marathon - 17 October

247

Tony Mackness

1:34:23

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Round Rotherham 50 - 16 October

So, on the Saturday morning, we found ourselves standing in the dark outside a sports center near Rotherham with about another 100 starters at 6am. It was dark (headtorches most definitely on), it was chilly, and we were about to embark on what was our longest challenge yet. 50 miles, in a very big circle. I'm not going to write down the whole thing - I've already written a very long blog about it on Fetch.... but suffice to say, this was a wonderful event which I thoroughly enjoyed. We were rained on on several occasions, we ran through all sorts of stuff and terrain - from fields to industrial estates, woods, golf courses and saw some amazing rainbows. There were moments of elation and despondancy, but nothing will take away the feeling when Steady pointed out the finish and I realised we'd done it! A great event, which I will return to. Much enjoyed - Alix

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Leicester Half-Marathon - 10 October

48

Pete Fellows

1:26:42

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Chicago Marathon - 10 October

1351

Tony Mackness

3:12:14

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Loch Ness Marathon - 3 October

682

Andrew Pitt

3:48:38

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Midland Open Cross-Country Relays - Melton Mowbray - 2 October

Check out the photo gallery for this event