LSARRC News 14th August 2012

Patrick Houghton

A combination of the Olympics and the school summer holidays has meant that it has been a quiet time for Lytham St Annes Road Runners, and especially their junior section. This has not stopped the junior’s chairman and chief coach, Tony Croft, from using the games in a positive way to promote athletics.

In conjunction with the YMCA, Tony has led “taster” sessions with examples of running, throwing and jumping all included. The latest one was at Bridges Playing Fields in Warton on Thursday where 25 local children took part by throwing dummy javelins and shot putts, jumping hurdles and running a measured short course. The children’s’ ages ranged from four to fourteen and they all joined in enthusiastically, especially in the relay race at the end.

These supervised sessions are free and three others are scheduled, all in St Annes. Starting at 1pm they are at Waddington Park on 15^th, Blackpool Road on 22^nd and Hope Street Park on August 31^st. Pre-booking isn’t required.

One junior member of the club was in action this week. At the season’s penultimate Mid-Lancs track and field meeting in Preston on Saturday Lytham’s only representative was Patrick Houghton. Running in only his second meet, Patrick was fifth in the under-15 boys’ 800m with a time of 2:30.1.

In the Northern Vets 10k Road Championships in Bispham on Sunday Graham Webster won the vet 60 category. The full results are still awaited.

LSARRC News 7th August 2012

For Lytham St Anne’s Road Runners this week’s theme was winning age categories, whether junior or veteran. Firstly in Austria one of the club’s leading juniors, Alex Stanier (pictured), represented the club in the Leogang under-15 2k race. Having narrowly missed out on winning last year Alex was determined from the start to do better this time. And so he did, winning by nearly two minutes in 6:53.

Then on Saturday in the Catforth Canter 5k Graham Webster and Sue Samme again excelled to win their age categories. Vet 60 Webster was eighth overall with an excellent time of 18:40 on this flat course while vet 45 Samme was just a minute behind. Elizabeth Walton also had a good run to finish 31^st.

The following day it was the turn of Vet 65 Sylvia Gittens at the Wagon and Horses 10. This is a ten-mile race mostly run along the scenic banks of the river Lune from Lancaster. Not only was Sylvia the first in the vet 65 and vet 60 categories she also achieved 123^rd position overall out of the 175 competing, beating many half her age. 

Also running at this event was Julia Rolfe who was 108^th overall. New to the vet 50 category Rolfe also ran on Thursday in the Cuerden Valley Badger 10K Trail race. This is a tough trail run with hills, kissing gates, stiles and flights of steps to be negotiated. Rolfe ran in as the second vet 50 with a time of 55:13.