60 metres to 70 kilometres.

Elaine Ledden, Simon Curran, Dave Wilson and Paula Williams at Sportcity for the Manchester Indoor Meeting last Sunday.
This past week has been pretty successful as far as our club members are concerned.

Last weekend saw Ben Kruze and Matt Burdus-Cook finish 1st and 2nd respectively at the Windsor Winter Lake 10k and Alex Adams was victorious at the Fladbury 5.

Both Ben and Alex were comfortable winners with winning margins of 2.23 and 2.15 respectively. Alex continued his excellent start to 2022 by finishing 1st in Wednesday’s Shakespeare race.

There is a link to the results of Wednesday’s Shakespeare Race further on in the newsletter.

At the local parkruns Ned Campbell was victorious on Saturday and on Sunday Alfie Musk just pipped Albert Bettles on the line to win the junior parkrun for the 2nd successive week. In both races the first female members to finish were also club members, with Georgie Campbell on Saturday and Jasmine Mothershaw on Sunday.

Four of our Masters athletes made the trip to Sportcity in Manchester to compete in an early season indoor event. For Elaine Ledden and Simon Curran it was their first venture at an indoor track.

Tara Lambert started off ’22 doing what she does, competing in a hilly, wet and windy ultra. This time it was the 43.8 mile (70k) County to Capital race, involving running from Wendover to London Paddington! Words fail me. A huge well done Tara.

Good luck to all of our XC teams this weekend, young and not so young. Indeed good luck to all of you who are racing.

Take care

Best wishes

David Jones.

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Manchester Indoor Meeting
Sportcity – Manchester.

Report – Dave Wilson.

Four of the club’s Masters Athletes travelled to Sportcity last Sunday to compete in the Manchester Indoor Open Meeting.

This was the first indoor event for the team this year and first up was our Masters superstar Paula Williams in the senior women’s 60M hurdles, where she finished 3rd in her heat with a time of 10.20 seconds.

This was followed by the heats for the 60m flat and competing in his first ever indoor meet was Simon Curran, who ran a PB of 8.72 seconds in the senior men’s race. Competing in the same heat was Dave Wilson, who unfortunately false started, resulting in disqualification. Thankfully Wilson was given a second chance and competed in the following heat, where he recorded a time of 8.36 seconds, beating his previous M50 club record.

Paula Williams and Elaine Ledden were next up in the senior woman’s heats. Williams again securing 3rd place in a time of 8.83 seconds. Elaine Ledden, who was competing in her first indoor event, is proving a force to be reckoned with in all of the sprint distances and continued this trend with a new W60 club record of 9.87 seconds.

Dave Wilson finished off the day competing in the senior men’s 200m, where he recorded a time of 27.37 seconds.

Overall it was a good start to the Indoor track and field season.

And They’re Off!

January Shakespeare Race.

Wednesday saw the first of this year’s Shakespeare Races.

Sarah Bland commented after the race “Hi Everyone
A record turnout tonight with 86 runners! Well done to you all and thank you to all the marshals.
It seems that there is not sufficient time to down a pint in the pub nowadays – either we have to make the courses longer or you will have to go slower, Tony and I were still in The Encore when Alex, Matt and Rich came in! A memorable moment!”

For the full results please follow the link below where you will see that Alex Adams finished in 1st place and Kate Wright was first female finisher.

https://www.racetecresults.com/results.aspx?CId=16418&RId=745

Ben Kruze and Matt Burdus-Cook

Windsor Winter Lake 10k Run.
Dorney Lake

Report – Matt Burdus-Cook

Ben Kruze started 2022 as he finished 2021 by setting a new club record. He set a new PB and took 8 seconds off his own club 10k record, setting a new best time of 31:44 in the 2 lap, flat but exposed course at Dorney Lake.

Ben won the race easily and was joined on the podium by teammate Matt Burdus-Cook, who made a late decision to run the race following the cancellation of the County Cross Country Champs.

Burdus-Cook finished in 2nd place, just 3 seconds outside his own PB in a time of 34.04.

Both runners were pleased with their respective early season preparatory performances in challenging cold wet and blustery conditions, which slimmed the usually sizeable overall field in all of the concurrently run events (5k, 10k, 15k and Half Marathon).

The Ladies race was won by Rachel Brown (Club unknown) in 36:14.

The 2012 Olympic Rowing venue offers several multi-distance Duathlon and Running day-events throughout the year and Ben and Matt intend to return to prepare for other key fixtures in the running calendar throughout 2022, and they would both recommend the course for PB attempts, albeit choosing slightly calmer days!

A Stratford contingent at the Fladbury 5

Fladbury 5

Report – Hannah Osborne.

Stratford runners were out in force as they took on the sold out Fladbury 5 race on a chilly but sunny Sunday morning.

The race is a 5.5 mile multi-terrain course, mainly off road, along the banks of the River Avon, through Fladbury Village and Lower Moor, Worcestershire.

1st to finish overall and with a 2 minute lead was Alex Adams in 31:07. This young man continues to show what a talented athlete he is, not just by his speed but by running this (very muddy) race in his white Nike Road trainers and staying upright! His speed must have enabled him to float above the mud!

Next to finish in 9th and win his age category was Neil Wicks in 37:05. 1st female for Stratford was Hannah Osborne, in 41:32 and she finished 3rd female overall.

It was a family affair for the Deaner’s, which saw all of them running this race. Jake Deaner was next to finish in 44:10, with sister Ellie coming in at 45:47, 12th female and 1st in her age category.

Just behind Ellie it was great to see Cara Reynolds back in her SAC top after a number of years and she ran a solid time of 45:56 alongside Karl Harris (45:58).

The SAC athletes continued to flood in with Lisa Dallisson looking at home off-road and comfortable in this race (46:43) and she finished just ahead of Sarah Odell (47:05), Sarah commented: “Amazing muddy fun, great to be back in a SAC vest after 3 years!! Great racing by all. The last race I did was Fladbury 2019 before it all went pear shaped”

Next SAC finisher, who was very much at home in this race was Susan Hunt in a time of 49:37. Emily Adams was next to finish in 51:14, running a quicker pace on this course than at Parkrun the day before!

Kate Sergent snuck in under the hour 59:51 (2nd in AG), coming over the line with Peter Deaner. Then with the loud support and cheers that Stratford AC do best, saw Annie Threadgill & Karen Harris finish arms aloft in 1:25:43, the longest run for Karen in many years.

The goody bags at the end had delicious vine tomatoes in – grown on site and cake!! Which was enjoyed by all with tea from and coffee from Emily’s car – it was needed to warm up.

Tara Lambert.
Country to Capital.
Report – Tara Lambert.

About 300 participants set off at 9.45 on a chilly wet Saturday morning in Wendover, to run the 43.8 miles (70k) to London Paddington.

The weather deteriorated from there as we ran through the muddy tracks and field paths of the Ridgeway and then Chiltern link paths, becoming windier and raining harder.

There were some steep climbs as we left the Chilterns and the treacherous muddy descents caused lots of people to slip over. Somehow I managed to stay upright, I think the Buckinghamshire mud doesn’t have anything on the sticky, Warwickshire clay I’m used to!

Despite wearing my jacket, I was wet through after an hour; ringing out my gloves and putting them back on was a bit depressing but I was moving well enough to keep warm despite this, so it wasn’t a disaster.

After about 23 miles we joined the canal system into London and the paths were mostly flat and hard-surfaced, though puddly and sloppy in places.

I could pick my pace up here and make up some time overtaking lots of people who were walking. There was no real food available at the aid stations and no indoor facilities or loos throughout the race, so that was a bit grim.

I dropped my water bottles in the muddy ground while refilling a couple of times, which was incredibly grim!

In the second half I felt the lack of real food and the effects of too much sugar.

The London canals are a bit scary as they pass through some very dubious areas and seeing groups of people congregated under bridges as I approached was a slight concern at dusk but there were lots of participants on the course, so I felt reasonably safe and thankfully was only running for about an hour in full darkness.

All in all, the race went well for me, and I finished quite strongly in 8h36m. I then had to get changed out of my wet clothes on a London side street, get the tube to Marylebone, the train to Wendover and drive back to Stratford. Let’s just say I wasn’t particularly fragrant at that point and leave it there!

And Finally

A couple more photos from last weekend’s Fladbury 5 race.

Lisa Dallisson and Sarah Odell.
Kate Sergent jumps for joy.
Parkrun News

It was an excellent week for club members in both parkruns last weekend. Ned Campbell came first on Saturday with Richard Liggatt and Taylor Stubbins 3rd and 4th respectively. Georgia Campbell was first female finisher before going back to university on Sunday. In the junior parkrun Alfie Musk won for the second successive week, just pipping fellow member Albert Bettles on the line. Jasmine Mothershaw was first girl to finish.

Ned Campbell
Alfie Musk
It wouldn’t seem right without our weekly photo of some of our junior endurance group training on the Welcombe Hills. They’ll be competing at Walsall Arboretum this Sunday. Good luck Team Stratford. Good luck to our seniors also.