28 Fairlands Valley Spartans – eleven women and 17 men – turned out for the third cross country league race in four weeks. That’s a much stronger women’s team than last time and helped the club’s performance. The race was in Trent Park.
This Sunday DAVID HARRIS-CHERGUIT ran 19 seconds faster than seven days earlier and moved up from 10th to sixth overall. This time ADRIAN BUSOLINI was one second faster with his 29:12 and he was 15th.
TRACEY JACKSON led in the Spartan women with her 39:33 with YUKO GORDON second in 40:40.
It seemed warmer and drier in Trent Park than previous years.
The Spartan men improved to fourth out of 20 in the men’s race at Barley only a week ago.
The next Cross Country League race, race four, will be in Stevenage on Sunday 15th December.
Spartan One Two At Bedford
Spartan ASHLEY JOHNSON was first female in Sunday’s Bedford 10K with a brilliant sub 40 time of 39:50 chip time and Spartan MARIE COLUCCI was sixth with 48:52.
Ashley and Marie were first and second in the women 40 plus category and 11th and 34th out of all the 263 finishers.
Ashley said, “It was a twisty, turny course. Some muddy, cross country parts. So not as fast as I’d hoped but a win is a win.”
Knebworth – A Win by 15 seconds and Penny was Early
Six Spartans ran the Hertfordshire Half Marathon from Knebworth House.
Spartan KRISTIAN ATANASOV had a top ten run finishing in 1:20:33. He was ninth out of 1,362 finishers and second senior male.
CHRIS WATLING said it was a tough course, very undulating. He didn’t feel overly prepared for today coming off the back of two injuries and only two x 5km treadmill runs during recovery over the last two weeks, but he was very happy with his time! 1:53:45.
Chris added it was good preparation for the Baldock Beast in Feb! Great event and support. Good to see a few Spartans out there today too!
JIM BROWN reckons he’s still trying to get out of marathon mode and didn’t think there was a sensible chance of getting under two hours on the rolling course but, but with a reasonable last four kilometres he got sight of the leading runner in his category, caught him after going through the gate into the grounds of Knebworth House and dug in to be first man 70 plus by a margin of 15 seconds.
PENNY SCHENKEL was early. Clearly delighted she beat her predicted time by more than 28 minutes and finished in 2 hours 31 minutes 55 seconds (2:31:55). The London plan is clicking in.
MARK COLLINS was 80th in 1:33:47 and CLAIRE EMMERSON finished in 2:15:05.
New York Marathon – a Spartan in the Big Apple
Spartan ROSS GALLAGHER ran the New York Marathon in 3 hours 2 minutes 43 seconds (3:02:43).
He ran on Sunday to complete his Abbott World Marathon Majors 6 Stars.
Ross said it was a fantastic race and up there with some of the best crowds at any race with the Bronx a personal favourite. The bridges were just as tough as people say… and he thought parks were flat… Central Park isn’t.
Resolution Track 5K
Five Spartans were among the 39 runners who went 12.5 times round Ridlins Track on Wednesday evening. This was the Resolution 5K, a guaranteed no hills event.
After spinning around for 19 minutes 15 seconds JAY PAPA was the first Spartan to finish. SIMON JACKSON wasn’t far behind in 19:27 then MATT GIFFORD 20:49; BRIAN WHITE 22:31 and KARL SHREEVE in 27:12.
| Pos | MF | CatPos | Name | Cat | Time | Age Gd |
| 7 | 7 | 3 | Jay PAPA | MS | 19:15 | 66.7 % |
| 10 | 10 | 4 | Simon JACKSON | MV40 | 19:27 | 73.9 % |
| 19 | 19 | 6 | Matt GIFFORD | MV50 | 20:49 | 72.5 % |
| 26 | 24 | 1 | Brian WHITE | MV60 | 22:31 | 76.5 % |
| 35 | 30 | 10 | Karl SHREEVE | MV50 | 27:12 | 56.4 % |
39 ran.
Parkrun Highlights 2nd November
Exactly the same number of runners, 527, finished the award winning Stevenage parkrun this week as the previous Saturday. There were 227 women and 300 men.
This time Spartan GRANT RAMSAY was well in the top ten at fourth with his 18:33. KAREN ELLIS was fastest female from Spartans with 25:38.
PAUL SHELLEY has just one parkrun to go before a major milestone. He finished his 99th in 24:49. MARTIN JACOB ran his 20th in 26:20.
So far there have been 117,694 finishes by 15,674 different people at the 371 Stevenage parkruns. They won the top award at the Recent Stevenage Together awards.
Spartans running parkrun 5Ks elsewhere included SIMON JACKSON 19:59 at Great Denham; ADRIAN DONNELLY tenth at Henlow Bridge Lakes in 22:15; YUKO GORDON 23:09 at Storey’s Field; SUZY HAWKINS was first woman at Wendover Woods in 23:34; MEGAN SUTTON 27:07 and SAM SUTTON 32:45 at Bedford; LUCY FIELD 27:43 at Sandhurst Memorial; CHRIS HOLLAND 30:20 at Rutland Water; CHLOE CHAPMAN 30:57 at the Pocket parkrun; and STEVE SMITHSON who was the lonesome Spartan at Panshanger. He said he had a slightly slippy and challenging powerwalk. He finished in 255th place out of a field of 317 parkrunners in 34:13
Recently Spartans ASHLEY JOHNSON and NIKKI NATION ran the South Norwood parkrun.
South Norwood parkrun ran an event for Black History Month and one of the local running groups called Emancipated Run Crew did a take over.
Ashley was first woman out of 82 in 20:47 and NIKKI NATION 28th in 30:03. 215 ran and Ashley as fifth overall!
An official ParkRun film crew were there and they interviewed both Nikki and I.
It’s on Facebook if you want to watch it:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/4Q61SH4SanLStP7y/?mibextid=WC7FNe