The athletes of LBAC spread themselves around the country this weekend in their search for races for a variety of reasons.

First up on Friday was the start of Joby Hobbs crazy attempt to run the full length of the 89 mile long Ridgeway in 3 days! We shall get a report of his efforts once his body and brain have started working properly again!

On a more sensible note, Gail Duckworth went to Birmingham on saturday for the British Masters national Cross-country at Perry Park. Now those of us that finished our cross-country season wading through the mud of Wing and Alton Towers would not recognise such an event as Gail didn't even wear spikes! This was a nice treat for her as she ran around three 2K laps with all of the other veteran women and the V65 men.

As is becoming traditional now, Gail convincingly won the national title for the F55 women in just under 25 minutes and finished over 90 seconds ahead of her nearest rival in the age group. She was 27^th overall in the race which was won by ex-international Lucy Elliott.

Sunday saw five LBAC club members competing in the ever growing Milton Keynes half marathon. This year there were over 2500 runners who completed the 13.1 miles that start and finish at the snow dome. It's all very well organised, but the only problem is that the last two miles are almost entirely up hill, which makes it a very challenging finish.

As a club we managed to spread ourselves well through the field and first home was Simon Coombes in 11th place with a time of 1:15:39. Clearly everyone else in the club would be over the moon with this effort, but Simon was disappointed as he was aiming for the London Marathon qualifying time of 1:15. Pete Mackrell is currently in the latter stages of his marathon training and so was also looking for a good time on the day. Whilst his final result of 1:20:30 was 35 seconds off his best, he did manage to acheive a PB by going through 10K in 36:20! Not bad, considering her hadn't even reached halfway and his previous best was 38:05!

Behind Pete was new member Alan Carter, who completed the distance in 1:36:22 to finish in 312^th position. It has been a long time since we've seen Tony Hincks down on a Wednesday but he ran under the Leighton Buzzard banner on Saturday to complete the course in 1:45:38. New member Julia Hilton is in training for the Brighton marathon and in her first half marathon she completed the course in 2:17:02 and she now has her sights set on the 10th April on the south coast.

While Julia was in MK, another Brighton marathoner was heading off to Finchley for the UK's longest running 20 mile road race organised by Hillingdon AC. Jane Sauer was starting to doubt herself in her challenge to get under the 4 hour mark in her first attempt at a marathon so set off on the four lap(!) course in North London without too much confidence. However, four pretty consistent laps later she crossed the finish line feeling quite strong in a time of 2:51:35. That is 3:45 pace and suddenly the confidence has returned and a couple more decent longish runs she see her on top form for the day.

With marathon season fast approaching, there are long races all over the country and so Amy Inchley headed of to Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire for the Ashby 20 which was a two lap effort in the rolling countryside. Having done a couple of miles warm-up and been given the specific instructions to treat it as a gentle training run and not to go faster than 8.15 miles, Amy once more completely ignored Andy and just did her own thing, putting in numerous miles around 8 minutes and looking comfortable in the process!

As it turned out, this worked perfectly well as she finshed with her fastest mile of 7:50 to complete the course in 2:44:30, which has given her a lot of confidence with a month left before the big day in London on the 17^th April. On a slight diversion, there was one chap running in Ashby with a Leighton Tough 10 cap on………! Also, the chap who finished 9th was the man who Richard and Andy carried up to the line at last year's London. It's a small world.