On Sunday, Chris Gay competed in the 10K on the sea front at Clacton-on-Sea, clocking a time of 39:32 and finishing 6th of 247 competitors, a good performance under the conditions. There was a strong wind which severely retarded the runners when going in a south westerly direction along the promenade and PBs were very hard to come by as a result. Paul Dockerill (1:41:28) and Henry Hamilton-Gould (1:44:34) opted for the Half Marathon distance and had even more problems with the wind as they had to go several times up and down the promenade. Both runners did very well under the circumstances but were some 10 minutes adrift from their best times this year, in 61st and 82nd position respectively from 397 starters.
Over at Kimbolton in Cambridgeshire, Kimbolton Castle (now a school) was a fitting setting for the start and finish of this popular Half Marathon race with 499 runners taking part. Clive Purbrook clocked 1:54:00 and finished only slightly down on his best time this year, while Caroline Mcintosh came up trumps with an all-time PB of 2:36:04, beating her previous time by over 4 minutes.
On Sunday morning at 11:15am, in the Newmarket Great Run Local (GRL) 5K on Warren Hill training grounds, young Ruby Davis of the Junior Newmarket Joggers was first home of 21 runners in a time of 22:23, which is an impressive performance for her first ever competitive 5K run. This follows on from her win in the girls’ Junior 2K race at the recent Kevin Henry League meeting. The GRL is a free timed 5K or 2K run, similar to parkrun, sponsored by the same organisation which puts on the Great North Run and other ‘Great’ runs around the country. We are lucky to have one right on our doorstep every week.
