Lockdown Take Two did not stop Fairlands Valley Spartans running. With a series of virtual events; a new relay – this time across the USA; a hard soft challenge and “buddying” opportunities as an alternative to running solo they kept very active.
They have run the whole of the historic Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles and gone on to complete the Las Vegas, Death Valley, Big Sur, San Francisco and Napa Valley Marathons and the 100 mile Western States Endurance Run.
On day 23, Saturday, they completed 245 miles with 52 members posting a distance.
Then on day 24, Sunday, they completed 482 miles with 61 members. On their way to Houston they visited the Fort Apache Indian Reservation and completed the El Paso Marathon. By Sunday evening their total distance so far was 5,429 miles.
It looks like the new health restrictions will allow some real races from 5th December and we look forward to reporting those.
Hard Soft Challenge – Time To Get Muddy
NIKKI WILBY now has more than fifty entrants in her hard soft motivator. Run 5K or 5 miles on tarmac in November then see how close you can get to matching the time cross country in December. Time’s up for the November on road qualifiers. Now it’s time to get muddy.
Flying With A Team
It was a first for Fairlands Valley Spartans on Saturday with a team qualifying for the Fly 5K interclub competition for the first time.
This was the 26th Fly 5K virtual run on a Saturday morning but the eighth inter-club competition. Fly 5K sprang up when parkruns were suspended. 265 including the five Spartans team of five ran in edition 26. Although participants in this virtual event all have to start by 12 noon on a Saturday morning they are running in different places at different times.
Running around Stevenage on Saturday morning JIM BROWN repeated his third in category performance with 25 minutes 57 seconds. He was 144th.
NICK KLEANTHOUS was 154th in 26:19; NICOLA ANDERSSON 168th in 27:09; PAUL HOLGATE 210th in 30:02 and PENNY SCHENKEL 220th with a Fly 5K personal best of 30:33, an improvement by 1 minute 6 seconds.
While Fly 5Ks have to be run on a Saturday morning (Not) parkruns can be run any day of the week. In addition to the Fly times MARIAN MORLEY ran a 26:00; ALISON SHELLEY 29:37 and PAUL JENNINGS 30:22.
ALISON SHELLEY, CLAIRE EMMERSON and JENNY GARRETT all ran the Virtual Bass Belle 10 miles on the weekend the “real” event would have taken place. Alison took 1 hour 29 minutes while Claire and Jenny both completed the course in 1 hour 36 seconds.
The cancellation of mass start races during the second lockdown upset his plans but JIM BROWN ran another virtual half marathon in Stevenage on Sunday. This time was 1:58:05. In November he ran better than the average equivalent of a parkrun every day. All part of his efforts to raise funds for the Mayor’s charities. Other Spartans are raising money for Feed Up Warm Up.