LSARRC News 5th August 2013

The Farleton Knott Fell Squad:
L-R Greg Oulton, Dawn Lock, Terry Hellings, Debbie Cooper

At the Farelton Knott Fell Race on Sunday it was a small but resilient group of Lytham St. Annes Road Runners Club members who tackled the fourth and final round of this year's Inter-Club Fell Series.  Farleton Knott Fell Race was the selected race and the first British Open Fell Runners Association race to be included.

This was the hardest of the season's courses and in wet or windy weather could have been almost impossible.  Tricky even for seasoned fell runners, it promised to test to the limit the less experienced thirty plus inter-club runners.  The first section involved a runnable climb nearly to the summit with a long level stretch that eased the way up.  Similarly, the return, down parallel paths, was also a forgiving passage.  But separating the two simple and scenic sections was a plunge down the southern scree slope to within a field's length of the start and an exhausting climb back to the top some 200 metres above. 

First woman for Lytham Debbie Cooper

Nimble and practiced fell runner Debbie Cooper was LSARRC's first finisher, passing Terry Hellings, the Club's leader at the previous two events, on the steep climb back to the summit.  Cooper finished in 59:44, 90th overall and third women in the Inter-Club standing her in good stead for an end-of-season prize.  Hellings finished 1:01:29 six places back and the other two team members, Greg Oulton and Dawn Lock finished 123rd in 1:15:03 and 125th in 1:31:35 respectively.

Lytham fielded incomplete teams in the Open, Ladies, Vets, 50s and 60s teams.  The four team members performed well enough to take 4th in the Open and went one better in the Ladies, 3rd.

Lytham members Graham Webster and Pam Binns competed in the Northern vets 5000m track Championships at Leigh Sports Village on Wednesday. Pam Binns put in a sterling performance in the 5000m track event placing her in the esteemed position of 1st FV65 (27m 46.9s). This was Binns’ first track race for an undisclosed number of years and probably her first ever 5000m track race. Graham Webster was also 3rd mv60 and medal winner.

In LSARRC Junior’s news, Alex Stanier, whilst on a family holiday in Austria, competed in the local Leoganger Sonnberg 11.5km multi terrain race. Alex rose to the challenge of both the step up in distance and the hilly course and ran a very good race, finishing 1^st in the U17B category and 17^th overall in a time of 49:23.09.