LSARRC News 27th April 2015

On Saturday morning, Joanna Goorney headed over to the Yorkshire Dales for the 61st 3 Peaks Fell Race.  Conditions were pretty grim for the 23.2 mile and 5276 ft of ascent course with pretty much constant rain which turned to snow on the top of Ingleborough.  Despite struggling with the cold, wet conditions and taking a tumble on the way down from Ingleborough, she managed to finish in 4:23:17 in 366th place.

The Virgin London Marathon was obviously the big race of the weekend with 7 athletes from Lytham St Annes taking part.  Weather conditions were perfect - overcast with none of predicted rain and no wind to talk about.  Runners felt very cold at start but it didn't take long to warm up once they got going.

First home for the club was Andy Draper who completed the course in an excellent 2:53:32 and 1037th place.  Not far behind and running a PB was Tom Howard who finished in 2:57:44  in 1476th place.  Both Neil Tate and Graham Webster who were both selected for the 2 club places were both running their first marathon and made excellent debut attempts.  Neil  finished in 3:01:40 and 2036th place while 61 year Graham Webster finished in 3:18:04 and 4089th place.  Mel Koth also had an superb race to finish in 3:16:45 and 3909th place. 

70 year old Pam Binns was also running the London Marathon for the first time and found the support and atmosphere that she had been told to expect didn't disappoint.  One of the other runners came along side her at the finish asking if she would take his hand to go over the finishing line together. So she did, making a memorable finish.  Pam ran a remarkable 4:35:44 was in 23225 place and 10th in her age category.  Derek Heron finished in 17548th place in 4:14:27 and Karen Kidner was 24431st in 4:40:32.

While Neil Tate was running the London Marathon, his older brother, Ian Tate, was the sole representative for the club in the Blackpool Marathon. He finished in 174th place in 3:53:40.

Ruth Wheatley

Ruth Wheatley headed over to Madrid to run the Rock and Roll Madrid Marathon.  The weather was oddly like England - light rain then pouring rain but at least it kept the temperature down. There were 12,000 entrants, about 10% were female. Ruth ran a superb 4:21:58 knocking 25 minutes off her previous pb.

A little more local was the Lytham St George's Day 10.  The race attracted some good athletes with the race won by Chris Livesey of Preston Harriers in 30:46.  LSARRC had 3 runners in the race with Colin Laidlaw in first in 40th place and 44:34.  Roy Stevens wasn't far behind om 46th place in 46:24.  Dawn Bloor was delighted to record her first ever sub 50 10k in a  chip time of 47:42, nearly 3 minutes off her PB and a club gold standard

Greg Oulton ran the Bolton 10k on Sunday morning in 52:08 (51:13 chip time) to finish in 250th place.

Two Junior members competed at the Trafford Medal Meeting on Sunday. James Nicholas finished first in his heat of the U13B 100m in 14.07 and 6th overall and then went on to run a personal best in the 200m of 28.81 finishing 4th overall. Simon Holt, competing in the same age group, ran a personal best in the 800m of 2:37.3 (9th) and then ran another personal best time in the 200m of 29.93 (8th).

Chloe Norman competed for her school in the Lancashire Schools Combined Events Championships staged by Hyndburn AC. The U15 athlete competed in 5 events over the course of the day starting with Hurdles followed by Shot Put, High Jump, Long Jump and then the 800m. The highlight of the day was her Long Jump in which she recorded a PB of 4.38m.