Country X/C, Reading Half, Bratislava Marathon & Half
County Cross-Country Champs - Plock Court 27th March
In the Gloucestershire 4K X/C Championships Bourton Roadrunners finished the season with another huge haul of medals. Once again the juniors produced the goods, with Lewis Gray achieving his highest Senior race result in 4th position overall and gold Junior man. Conor Shoemark, still in his first year of racing, was 5th overall and silver Junior Man. James Outhwaite made the top 10 for the first time and together with Finn Shoemark, won the County Junior Men's team gold.
Tony Goodwill, back to full fitness, was V50 Champion, with Andy McCoombes winning the silver medal, and, backed up by Norm Lane, took the Vet 50 Team Gold.
Darren Long, Chris Hartley and Richard Bufton just missed the Senior prizes and Neil Cairns successfully completed his first championship race.
Corrigan Cox had a brilliant run for 2nd Lady overall and won the County Senior Lady title. Brittany Teague took a well deserved bronze.
The Vet 45 Ladies team of Jan Short, Lyn Spedding and Pauline Teague took the individual medals and County team gold.
In the Junior 1 Mile race for under 14 yrs, the Club's juniors shone, all winning prizes, with Lottie Hartley 5th, Rachel Heming 6th, Hannah Cairns 7th, Daniel Bufton 8th, Laura Heming 11th and Isobel Hartley finishing strongly in 12th.
Bratislava Marathon & Half - 28th March
Steve and Teresa Edwards travelled to Slovakia at the weekend, a new country for both him and Teresa to run in. Steve was running the Bratislava Marathon while Teresa did the accompanying half marathon. This was a rather late decision in the end but the result of a very kind invite from the organisers when they heard Steve was very close to running 500 marathons.
As this was quite a flat course, Steve decided to go out at 7:30min/mile pace to test his fitness and if okay to press for a sub 3:15. Having reached halfway in just over 1:37 and not feeling too bad he decided to go for it and pushed on to reach 20 miles in 2:27 eventually crossing the line in 3:13:15 for 52nd place out of nearly 500 runners. It was actually quite a warm day so he was very pleased to dip under 3:15 again for the first time since Dececember last year, especially as this gives him the good for age qualifying time for the 2012 London marathon. Two months ago he couldn't run at all, but having run 3 marathons in the past 22 days, he's now starting to believe that he might just make the 500 for Connemara. No pressure!
Teresa also had a good race running an evenly paced 2:04:38 taking it steady! and enjoying every moment of the event. This gave her a new high in training as she completed 45 miles last week for the first time ever as she continues her preparation to run her first (and only) marathon in May.
Reading Half Marathon - 28th March
The Reading Half Marathon attracted just two Bourton Roadrunners last Sunday; Darren Long finishing in 1:25:16 and Thea Powell Jones in 2:31:29.
Report Highlights
Bourton's runners grab lots of medals at the County Cross-country Championships.
Steve Edwards approaches his 500 marathon target in style - just 2 weeks to go.
Darren Long has a great run at Reading Half Marathon
Other reports may be found on our recent race reports page.