A crisp wintery day greeted 300 runners at Willen Lake for the Wolverton 5 (It used to be held in Wolverton!) LBAC managed to field 6 runners; the hardy few who remained while some sunned themselves in Lanzarote! At the gun, Simon Coombes was in the front few as expected, with Gary Stratford, Jordan Clay and Charlie Mead not far behind. Just a few paces behind them was Chris Williams, with Fred Watt making the total 6.

Natural order soon prevailed with Simon sitting in the top ten in what was an incredibly strong field including England athletes. Jordan settled in not far behind with Gary Stratford continuing to set a pace. Charlie had a laid back start until Chris Williams went past him which stirred him into action! The course is very flat with no real uphill sections; just two laps of differing size around Willen Lake. At the finish line, 5 of the 6 runners set PBs, some by quite a margin. Simon took one second from his previous PB set 9 years ago to record 26.00, a new M40 club record smashing the 27.25 set by M. Jellis in 1987. Chris knocked a further 35 secs of his PB taking him to sub 35 minutes (34.27), Jordan took 40 secs off (28.18), but the two stars were Charlie (31.38) who took 1m 20s off his PB, and Gary who took a staggering 1m 50s off his previous time to record 30m 31s.

We all enjoyed the race and it will certainly be on the calendar for next year. It was nice to see some of our Leighton Fun Runner friends out there too, and catch up with friends from the Tour of Milton Keynes. If anyone has any doubts about the benefits of racing, then the PBs above and the camaraderie that prevails should convince you to come and try it!