It was three laps for four Spartans on Saturday morning and PAUL SHELLEY was an amazing third overall in the Remembrance Runs Half Marathon at Carver Barracks near Debden in Essex.
He finished in 1 hour 23 minutes 18 seconds, a new personal best (PB) by three minutes, and WON his category. JIM BROWN won his category beating his nearest rival by three minutes. His 1 hour 56 minutes exactly (1:56:00) was his best this year by 2 minutes 59 seconds.
SAM TOPHILL ran an excellent 1:53:12 and DAVE ACKERY ran a well paced event to beat two hours with 1:59:43.
Jim said it was a bit chilly but no wind and no rain. Almost ideal. He was quite pleased to put it mildly. Jim’s recent parkruns have been 28:42 and 28:12. On Saturday his 5Ks were 27:36; 27:26; 27:22 and 27:34 taking him to 20K and the last 1.1K was at the same rate. And only six days after running a half at Knebworth in 2:02:15.
Gran Canaria Night Run
JAY PAPA ran the Night Run 10K at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He finished in 56:40. There were a huge number of runners.
Spartan Sam’s Achievement
SAM GENTRY started with the Fairlands Valley Spartans run together group at the end of August and started her Spartans membership in September this year. Last Sunday she ran her first ever race, a 10K. It was the Hertfordshire race at Knebworth House. Her chip time result was 1 hour 7 minutes 15 seconds. As her aim was to do it in 1 hour 10 minutes she was very happy with her result.
Cross Country Update
28 Fairlands Valley Spartans – eleven women and 17 men – turned out for the third cross country league race in four weeks on Sunday 3rd November. That’s a much stronger women’s team than last time and helped the club’s performance. The race was in Trent Park. The detailed results showed that FVS have moved up to sixth out of 20 in the combined score and fifth in the men’s competition.
At Trent Park 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 for 40th woman with YUKO GORDON second Spartan and 45th in 40:40.
It seemed warmer and drier in Trent Park than previous years when the event has been a bit of a mudfest. There were 405 finishers including 152 women.
The next Cross Country League race, race four, will be in Stevenage on Sunday 15th December.
Parkrun Highlights 9th November
26 of the 449 at the 372nd Stevenage parkrun were Spartans. GRANT RAMSAY moved up to second, only missing out on the top sport by nine seconds, with his 18:30.
KAREN ELLIS ran her 30th parkrun and was the fastest female from Fairlands with 25:30. PAUL JENNINGS ran his 90th in 30:34 but PAMELA VILJOEN is only one away from a very special milestone. She ran her 249th in 29:24.
Elsewhere at Henlow Bridge Lakes JOHN HARRIS finished in 22:45 and SUZY HAWKINS in 28:23; YUKO GORDON ran Letchworth in 26:02; MEGAN SUTTON 27:54 and SAMANTHA SUTTON 34:09 at Panshanger; CHRIS HOLLAND 28:14 at Rutland Water; JONATHAN JONES 36:30 and DZENANA TOPIC 36:33 were at the Wimpole Estate and DARRYL STEVENS was in Cranleigh with 39:03.
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 peopleat 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.
Fairlands Valley Spartans woke up to sunshine but a moderate breeze from the west for their Bryan Moore Shield and Paul Maguire Memorial 10 and 5 mile handicap road race events in Stevenage on Sunday morning.
48 Spartans took part. 28 in the 10 and 20 in the five mile race. 21 women recorded a time. There were some close finishes between people who may have started more than half an hour apart.
ROBERT EVANS beat his handicap time by a substantial 6 minutes 36 seconds to win the 10 mile Bryan Moore event just 18 seconds ahead of his nearest rival with a net time of 1 hour 30 minutes 24 seconds.
In the five mile race VICKY ARCHER beat her handicap by 2 minutes 14 seconds to win the Paul Maguire trophy. She beat second placed PAUL SHELLEY by just 28 seconds. Vicky completed her run in 45 minutes 46 seconds.
In the ten CHARLIE WHITE came in second with a 6:18 improvement and a total time of 68 minutes 42 seconds. Two others were less than two minutes behind – ANDREW PATTERSON with a fantastic time of 55 minutes 33 seconds, the fastest on the day and an improvement of 5 minutes 27 seconds, 1 minute 9 seconds behind the winner and JIM BROWN improving by 4:41 to 1:26:19 and 1:55 behind Robert.
KELLY EVANS was first woman in the ten and eighth overall. She improved by 1 minute 18 seconds to 1:31:12. TRACY PEZ was second female and tenth overall almost matching her handicap time of 1:22:30 with 1:22:27. SUZY HAWKINS was third and 14th overall but went round in a rapid 1 hour 11 minutes 21 seconds.
Bryan Moore was a founding, in 1984, and life member of Fairlands Valley Spartans.
First Ten in Ten – Bryan Moore Shield
Position
Name
1st lap
2nd lap
Total
Behind Winner
1
ROBERT EVANS
45:01
45:23
1:30:24
Zero
2
CHARLIE WHITE
35:28
33:14
1:08:42
@ 18 seconds
3
ANDREW PATTERSON
27:48
27:45
55:33
@ 1:09
4
JIM BROWN
42:52
43:27
1:26:19
@ 1:55
5
ADRIAN DONNELLY
32:32
34:59
1:07:31
@ 2:07
6
SIMON JACKSON
28:14
29:02
57:16
@ 2:52
7
ADRIAN BUSOLINI
30:00
31:10
1:01:10
@ 4:16
8.
KELLY EVANS (1st F)
46:46
44:26
1:31:12
@ 5:18
9.
JON SYPULA
46:27
46:36
1:33:03
@ 6:19
10.
TRACY PEZ (2nd F)
41:50
40:37
1:22:27
@ 6:43
14.
SUZY HAWKINS (3rd F)
35:23
35:58
1:11:21
@ 7:57
Paul Shelley’s time in the five was 32 minutes 14 seconds. Three others were less than a minute behind the winner – THOMAS SAUKA at 36 seconds with 36:52; STUART ARCHER at 42 seconds in 32:28 and STEVE MAYFIELD at 58 seconds in 38:44.
ALISON SHELLEY was second woman and seventh to finish. She was 2 minutes 17 seconds behind the winner in 41:03. The third woman and tenth overall was PENNY SCHENKEL at 3:03 with 48 minutes 19 seconds.
First Ten in Five – Paul Maguire Memorial Five
Position
Name
Time
Behind Winner
Comments
1.
VICKY ARCHER (1st F)
45:46
Zero
1st woman
2.
PAUL SHELLEY
32:14
@ 28 seconds
3.
THOMAS SAUKA
36:52
@ 36 seconds
4.
STUART ARCHER
32:28
@ 42 seconds
5.
STEVE MAYFIELD
38:44
@ 58 seconds
6.
BARRY OSBORNE
35:31
@ 1:15
7.
ALISON SHELLEY (2nd F)
41:03
@ 2:17
2nd woman
8.
VISHAL SHAH
46:11
@ 2:25
9.
MICHAEL O’KEEFE
47:35
@ 2:49
10.
PENNY SCHENKEL (3rd F)
48:19
@ 3:03
3rd woman
In handicap events estimated times are based on recent performances. The slowest runners start first with others following at intervals that should, in theory, get everyone over the finish line together. First over the line, the best improver, is the winner even if they weren’t the fastest in the race.
This is not an easy event to organise. A huge thanks to STEFFAN FORD and the event team for making it happen. And it raised hundreds of pounds for Feed Up, Warm Up.
Paul Maguire was an inspirational Spartan, a former Spartan of the Year, who passed away a few years ago. He lost a long battle with cancer, still running for several years following his diagnosis, in 2008 at the age of 42.
Chilly looking Spartans at the end of the Handicap races – The sun shone and the wind even helped drive them up the hills!
Here Comes The Stevenage Half! It’s on 21st November
The Stevenage Half Marathon is almost full.
Entries for the Stevenage Half Marathon are open but going fast! To secure your place please follow this link to enter Stevenage Half Marathon
Fast Parr At Dorney Lake
JONATHAN PARR came second at the Dorney Lake 5K Sunday morning with a time of 16 minutes 20 seconds.
The Last Fly
The last Fly 5K in the current series will be the 80th on Saturday 20th November. This virtual free run anywhere event on a Saturday morning helped to get a lot of people through lockdown when all events were cancelled. More than 15,000 Fly 5K runs have been recorded since the series was launched. There will be a Christmas edition and a real reunion in 2022.
This time JIM BROWN was third in his age category with 26 minutes 43 seconds. Wonder how many people will register with Fly 5K and run on the 20th.
Knebworth House
Five Spartans were at the Knebworth House events.
Luke casually showing us all how a PB is achieved!
ROBERT WRIGHT; LUKE GURNEY, MARK WILLIAMS and new member TONY RANDFIELD ran the Hertfordshire Half Marathon. Tony was 80th out of the 1,065 runners with a new personal best (PB) of 1 hour 35 minutes 54 seconds. He was second man 60 plus. Robert was 190th in a new course best 1 hour 43 minutes 55 seconds and Luke was 477th in a new PB of 1:56:08. Mark Williams ran round the half at what he called a gentle pace for 1:58:46 and was 559th but then he had run the Thames Meander Marathon the previous day, Saturday, which he finished in a new personal best of 3 hours 46 minutes 1 second.
JANE McFARLANE was encouraging friends new to running and ran the 10K in 68 minutes 20 seconds. The Stevenage Half Marathon is on Sunday 21st November.
Tony and Robert proudly showing off their medals after both getting a PB!
Parkrun Highlights
On Spartan stripey Saturday, the first Saturday of November, thirty Fairlands Valley Spartans ventured out to represent their club at Parkrun events around the country.
EVA RAMSEY was the first female to finish the Stevenage course in 22 minutes and 42 seconds, closely followed by ASHLEY JOHNSON, running her second Parkrun, who was the fourth in a time of 23 minutes and 2 seconds. ANDREW MCGUINNESS was the fastest of the 23 Spartans, finishing in 22 minutes and 18 seconds.
Continuing the trend, in Letchworth GEORGIE HOOPER was the third female to finish with a time of 26 minutes and 22 seconds. A Top 20 finish was also recorded by TIM SABAN in 23 minutes and 48 seconds on the Bideford course (19th male).
CATHY CRAIG did the Brockenhurst parkrun, a New Forest trail which is described as undulating. Although there were lots of horses hanging around at the start, luckily none were actually on the gravel path route. Since she was on my holidays, she just walked up the hills, and finished first in her age group in 32 minutes exactly.
(You can find all the Spartan parkrun times near the end of this release).
