A great team effort by Newmarket Joggers in Round Norfolk Relay

The annual, 24-hour Round Norfolk Relay started at Lynnsport, King’s Lynn on Saturday morning, 12th September and roughly followed the coastal and county boundaries of Norfolk in a clockwise direction, covering 198.7 miles in total. There were 59 competing teams from running clubs all over East Anglia and further afield; each team had 17 runners, with each team member tackling one of the 17 stages, which varied in distance from 5.49 to 18.17 miles. The event went on all through Saturday night to Sunday morning, with each team responsible for following its runners with vans during the dark hours and cyclists in the daylight. For off-road sections, runners were in communication by phone. Teams were sent off from Lynnsport at staggered times, calculated so that all teams would finish back at King’s Lynn at approximately the same time on Sunday morning.

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Newmarket Joggers put in a top team effort, finishing 14th of the 59 teams taking part and 6th of the 18 ‘club’ category teams. Their total time for the relay was 23:43:04. For club category, a certain ratio of male to female was required, plus inclusion of older age members, whereas ‘open’ teams could just pick their fastest 17 runners.

The biggest success stories for Newmarket Joggers were Neil Pollard (1:38:10, 16.60mi, 84.09% age grade) winning first male on Stage 9 and Izzy Talbot Price (1:11:56, 11.73mi, 80.82%) first female on the final Stage 17. In terms of age grade, Paul Holley (2:00:22, 18.17mi, 84.15%) was highest of all the Joggers on the longest Stage 12. Other Joggers doing very well on age grade were Carol Cienna Carter (58:25, 7.90mi, 79.89%) on Stage 6; Hannah Pollard (50:47, 7.52mi, 77.72%) on Stage 8; Mark Hayward (1:05:08, 10.59mi, 76.31%) on Stage 15 and Marc Drury (1:52:05, 16.32mi, 75.54%) on Stage 1.

Enormous gratitude to the loyal club volunteers, including team captain Jim Withers, Kate Warboys, Brian Munns, Keith Williams and Neil Williamson, who supported the team all or part of the way round, in van or on bike, day and night.

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ROUND UP OF OTHER RACES

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The biggest event over the weekend was undoubtedly the Great North Run on Sunday, which is an annual half marathon race from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to South Shields. This year, there were approximately 48,600 finishers and no doubt well over 50,000 entries, making it the biggest half marathon race in the world. Two Joggers, Mike & Sarah Sales, have been making this an annual pilgrimage for a good number of years and it was good to see them in the line-up once more. This year, Sarah Sales (2:10:43, 4,959th F of ~21,800, 213th in F55-59) was in very good form and came home ahead of husband Mike (2:15:35, 15,815th M of ~26,700, 943^rd in M55-59). Mike was unfortunately suffering from leg pain and had to run/walk some of the way. Apologies for the lack of precise detail for numbers of runners in age groups and gender, which were not searchable in the official results.

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NJ Caroline Mcintosh (2:42:45 SB, 1,958th F of 2,087, 6th of 9 in F70-74) was globe trotting and ran in the Tallinn Half Marathon in Estonia on Saturday, which attracted 5,396 runners in all. She did well to get a season’s best time and it will be good training for her planned Dublin Marathon at the end of October.

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Also on Saturday, Chris Underwood (1:56:41, 17th of 334 overall, 16th M of 218) was on good form in the notoriously difficult Giants Causeway Coast Half Marathon, which went along the Northern Ireland coast, from Larrybane Quarry to Port Ballintrae.

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On Friday evening, there was a local event at Wilberforce Athletics Track in Cambridge, called the FlyCarb C&C 10,000m, put on by Cambridge & Coleridge AC. There were two races with about 15 top club runners in each and lots of pacers helping athletes to achieve PBs. Three Newmarket Joggers took part in Race 1, for the slightly slower runners, though pacers were only available for up to 39:30. Tom Hemsley managed a very decent time of 36:56.89, which he had slightly bettered in the Newmarket 10K this year. Carol Cienna Carter managed to keep up with her 39:30 pacer, recording 39:30.43 SB, while her husband Richard Defries couldn’t quite keep up, recording 40:44.07 SB. It probably wasn’t too much fun running 25 laps of the track but an exciting evening nevertheless. The best time recorded on the night was 29:28.71 by Thomas Butler.

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On Sunday, much nearer home, Charles Rolfe (1:48:46 SB, 2nd of 38 overall) did well in the Zig Zag Peacock Plod Half Marathon at Hockwold House, near Brandon, which entailed 4 laps of a multi-lap trail course. In a similar vein, Ian McClements (2:41:44, 12th of 27) took part in the Fluffy Phoenix Half Marathon at Sunbury-on-Thames, over an out & back multi-lap course along the Thames towpath. Ian’s wife Dorota (3:14:15) and friend Russell ran together, further back.

NJ Reuben Smith, representing Newmarket Cycling & Triathlon Club, tried out the Trifarm Sprint Triathlon at Chelmsford, clocking 13:00 in the 800m swim, 40:01 in the 18km ride and 27:31 in the 5km run, totalling 1:23:08, including transition times. He finished 26^th of 78 overall, doing particularly well in the swim leg (15th) and also gained valuable ground due to excellent transition times.