January’s Stag Trophy race is often a mixed up affair with post Christmas lethargy and lousy weather indicating slow times, but sometimes we get a cold still night that allows people to run quickly despite the holiday over exuberance. Although it was a little damp under foot, the conditions were excellent and eight people achieved new PB’s, almost all of which joined the club in 2015.

The turn-out was once again very good with 26 people completing the course and making for a friendly but competitive race.

First person home on this occasion was Gareth Bird, whose 16.12 was 40 seconds quicker than his November time and allowed a relatively comfortable 12 second gap to James Cusack who earned himself 24 points for his effort to get second. Pablo Simon has been training with the club on a Monday for a few months and is set to join formally for 2016, but this was his first Stag and despite his Spanish blood not allowing him to remove his jacket he held on for third place.

There were then five consecutive finishers who all achieved PB’s for the three lap course in the order of Stuart Read, Katie Stanton, Sam Dear, Lisa Bowyer and Mark Adkins. Sam’s was particularly notable as it was his 7th consecutive PB and he is creeping closer to the 14 minute mark. There was one more PB earned by our overall leader Stuart Dimmock but with so many other running faster he still only came in 12th.

The competition after four months is still wide open with probably around 15 potential winners, however, for most of these people they will need to score well in all the three remaining races.

As it stands Lisa Bowyer is currently second in a Stuart sandwich between Dimmock and Read who are the only ones in the 60’s – points wise.

The next race is on Wednesday 3rd February and on this evening we will also have the club AGM – all being well so please make sure you have that in your diary.