The South-East of England is in drought having barely had a splash of rain for months. Well, with 11 club members out to run around MK and Berkhamsted in two excellent local half marathons and a further three out marshaling at MK, it was the perfect day for it to lash down with rain that eventually became sleet! Nice!

Starting a touch earlier was the Berko half where club captain Tom May and cross-country ever-present Jane Sauer were out searching for good times over the hills of Ashridge. The course is notoriously hilly, but still produces some fast times for lots of people who manage to make the most of the steep downhills without losing too much on the ups.

Jane has had a fantastic year with the club, having supported so many events and improved hugely. She was aiming to get somewhere near to her 1.44 time from Bedford in December, but was not feeling too hopeful as she stepped out into the pouring rain just a little way from home. Tom has had a great year too, by managing to avoid injury for over twelve months now after many years of being susceptible to a few. He seems to be getting back on track towards his standards of a few years ago when he first joined the club and was looking for a solid performance at Berko to continue that improvement.

As it turned out Jane did much more than get near her Bedford time as she smashed it by almost a minute and was "seriously chuffed" with her 1:43:47 in some absolutely horrible conditions through the woods of Ashridge. Tom meanwhile was powered on by his union jack shorts that saw him make the top 40 in the race of 1247 people. A time of 1:24:27 was a excellent effort on that course and earned a beer a rugby reward in the afternoon.

There was a whole range of people out in MK looking to dodge the raindrops as they left from Xscape on a course that started downhill and finished uphill, with about 9 miles of mostly flat running in the middle. Kelly Paine in her first ever half marathon, and Julia Hilton decided to run the full course together in trying to spur each other on. Whilst they didn't enjoy the (nearly) freezing conditions too much, they both got on well with the experience and were pretty pleased with their 2:12:42 for the 13.1.

Recent new member, Dave May was making his first proper attempt at a half marathon after keeping his brother company at the Great North previously. He dragged out his wife Abi on her birthday to watch and was delighted with his time of 2:01:53, 25 minutes quicker than he managed in Newcastle. Coralie Anderson has not been around too much recently as she's been struggling with an injury but was keen to complete her local half as an MK resident and despite the reduced training managed to complete the course by splashing through the puddles to 1:49:11.

The one thing that all the runners agreed on was that running was almost certainly preferable to marshaling on a very cold day in the pouring rain for three hours and so were grateful to all the marshals but particularly our own Amy, Pete and Chris who sacrificed their moring to help out and suffered for their offer.

Chris Williams has improved vastly since he joined the club about a year ago and was hoping to get a PB by aiming for 1:35. He started off with Dave, new member Steve Duvivie in his first half marathon and Tom Inchley who is back running after a hernia. Steve shot off from the gun and Chris decided to track Tom. Immediately the 7.15 pace that was planned went out of the window down the hill and the race was on. As it turned out, Chris stayed just behind Tom for most of the course and ended up just thirty seconds behind him at the end but smashed his PB by over five minutes to record 1:33:06, while Tom clocked 1:32:17.

The aforementioned Steve had suffered in his first race at the Wing cross-country as he pulled out after a fast start, two laps in. A few weeks more of training and this was a very different Steve who absolutely charged around his first ever half marathon to record a fantastic debut time of 1:27:58. Just around this trio was Warren Rose who ran strongly to just duck under the 1:30 mark in 1:29:26.

The final LBAC runner was Andy Inchley who in his old age was still feeling a touch hungover from Friday's bowling excesses. However, the fast downhill start and seeing lots of friends from MKAC both running and marshaling spurred him on to a very unexpected 1:19:24 and 30^th place out of 2737 runners which although pleasing, was a frustrating 2 seconds outside his PB.

All in all an amazing number of great runs on a digusting day of hideous weather. Well done all.