The Friendly Running Club

As our annual summer race P5MT was chosen this year to be the venue for the South Wales Trail Championship Race, we decided to allow a small cohort of medal contenders to have the opportunity to compete. Mike Harrison, Andy Pearce and Kevin Chalke (pictured above) had all put their names down on the Volunteer List, so once we'd secured the right numbers they were able to be released to gain a last-minute entry.

All three of them had excellent races, topped by Andy's victory in both the Open & Championship M55-64 Category, completing the 5 mile course in 32:59, 11th Overall and just over 4 mins down on the winner. He was tracked doggedly all the way round the course by Kev, the next Overall finisher, 12th on 33:29 and 2nd in both M55-64 races. Mike found a good pack of runners to stick with, before finishing 28th Overall on 36:55, which secured him 8th in the M35-44 Open Race, and 5th in the M35-44 Champs Race.

There were some interesting parkrun performances near and far. After last week's reference to the Cossie parkrun Mums' Gang of Lucy, Helen and Rachel, look what happened at Colby parkrun this week...we had a 1-2-3!

Jacob Allen loped round his local Uni course at Wollaton (Nottingham) in 19:38, not far down on his PB 19:02 for this location. It was great to see Nathan Piddock back out running after fairly major leg surgery recently...33:39 better than he was hoping for. Best of luck with the rehab, Nath!

Ross Flanigan seems to be racing every couple of days at the moment! New PB at 2 miles last Wednesday (more details below), followed up by a parkrun PB at Cardiff of 18:07 which delivered a stupendous 86.29% Age Grade Score!

Cossie parkrun regular Lara Hopkinson doubled up over the weekend with "something a bit different" at the Twin Tunnels Half Marathon near Bath; her Strava feed tells the story....

And there was another rather unique race experience occurring on the beach at St Andrews up in Scotland. As all running film buffs know, the opening sequence of "Chariots of Fire" was filmed there, although they were trying to pass it off as Sandwich on the Kent coast. Clem and Janice Clement put on their Twenties running kit (regimental white) to re-enact the scene, and no doubt run in slow motion to that epic sound track!

But back to the Cardiff Running Events Summer Series, where we had more eye-catching results. Huw Hudson finished in his now trademark 4th place(!) with a quality 10:16. Ross Flanigan (surprise surprise) put his hand in the PB suitcase again, extracting 25 seconds as he scorched to 11:37 and 1st spot in M50+. Tom Clarke "out-PB'd" him though, with 12:48 removing a whopping 43 seconds from his previous best.

Not far behind came Catherine Barker on 12:53 and 1st in F45+, with Nick Morgan closing in the squad on 13:11.