On Sunday at Snetterton Race Track in Norfolk, Andrew Taylor shaved another 53 seconds off his all-time 10K PB, clocking 42:45. This placed him 64th of 707 runners overall and 23rd of 142 in his MV40-49 age group, despite the wide age range not being to his advantage at 47. Over the last 3 months, Taylor has progressively taken over 2 minutes off his 10K PB, which stood at 44:54 before he clocked 43:55 in the Cambridge Town & Gown 10K last October. It was soon followed by another PB of 43:38 in the George Munday 10K in November, so all cylinders firing. In the Snetterton 5K race, Joe Cormack clocked 23:50 and was 74th of 257 runners overall, not far from his PB of 23:13. He was followed by Iain Perry in 25:07, which is his best ever 5K according to runbritainrankings.com, although he did clock 24:57 in a parkrun last December.
Also running at Snetterton in the 10K were Emma Reader (1:14:06) and Jeremy Reader (1:14:09), in their second run together of 2020, helping to raise money for Pregnancy Sickness Support by running a combined total of 245 miles this year. 245 was the number of days that Emma suffered from a dangerous condition during her recent pregnancy and it is her and her husband’s way of saying thank you for the treatment and help received. They were supported by Joe Cormack (1:12:51), who had earlier competed in the 5K race.
It was the Stowmarket cross country(XC) 5.3 mile (approx.) race at Haughley Park on Sunday, the 3rd of 6 fixtures in the Suffolk Winter XC League. Newmarket Joggers (NJ) and Sudbury Joggers (SJ) join forces and compete together in this league. No official times are out but runners’ own watch times are shown where known. First home for the women’s team was SJ Jackie Hann in 42:02, an amazing performance for her FV50 age group. Then came NJ Emma Newman in 45:07 and SJ Ruth Cowlin (FV55) in 51:57. For the men, NJ Jimmy Smith MV40 was 6th overall from 400+ runners and first home for the team in 32:57 from NJ Mark Hayward 33:16 (13th overall), NJ Paul Holley MV50 (time and position unknown) and Sam Sadler 336:34 (35th). Smith, Hayward and Holley were three of the victorious Newmarket Joggers who carried off the Team Cross Country Trophy at the Suffolk XC Championships two weeks ago, so all are in tremendous form.
Following on from Last week’s story of Junior Jogger Cerys Bithell’s success in the Suffolk Schools XC Championship qualifier at Woodbridge, it’s great to report that she achieved a huge 5K PB of 22:36 in the Fulbourn Hospital parkrun on Saturday. She was first of 5 in her JW11-14 age group and 3rd female to finish of 81 overall. This bodes well for her Suffolk Schools XC Anglian Championships regional race in Boston, Lincolnshire on 1st February, which she qualified for with her top performance at Woodbridge.