What a morning at Stevenage! On a normal day there are probably eight people who could justifiably expect the headlines after their efforts today, but with so many outstanding individual performances it's difficult to know where to start.

As the club half marathon championships for 2013, there were 17 people that arrived at Ridlins track in Stevenage feeling in fine fettle to take on the course (and three others frustrated not to be running!) in lovely, if somewhat breezy conditions. As usual, everyone had their own targets of PB's, qualifying times and simply finishing, but there was the usual pre-race nerves kicking around too.

It has to be said that it looked pretty good for Leighton from very early in the race, as Simon Coombes and Pete Mackrell took the lead in the first mile and the rest of the LBAC runners all looked confident as they completed the loop of Fairlands Valley Park half way around lap one. This was a little deceiving as we had two runners fall by the wayside after one lap, but this merely seemed to spur on the rest.

After 8 miles, Pete and Simon had opened up a gap of over a minute to the third placed runner and with Tom I and Tom M both in the top 20 all was looking good for the team prize. Our two leaders completed the extended Fairlands loop for a second time locked together and now the question was whether Pete could break Simon before the last mile, where Simon was likely to be favourite.

The rest of the LBAC team came through steadily behind with no-one looking like they were struggling too much, despite the breeze and the undulating course. It was clear though that there were a number of battles developing with Tom M was catching Tom I, Gary was chasing down Adam, Joe, Nick and Chris D were all within a minute of each other and Kate O had been tracking Amy all the way. What also clear was that quite a few people were on target for some big PB's.

At the front end, the leaders battle saw Simon start to push on at around eleven miles and Pete couldn't quite hang on to the scorching pace he was setting. They entered the track less than 100m apart and Simon stormed home to win with Pete just 16 seconds behind. Both had smashed their PB's and got under 75 minutes for the first time with Simon 1:14:16 and Pete 1:14:33. This is the first time since Tom May ran 1:13:58 in 2004 that anyone has come close to getting the London marathon championship qualifying time. Very well done chaps.

Speaking of Tom May, his return to form continued as he stormed around the second half of the course to take third place in the club championships for 15^th in the race and 1:21:31. Tom Inchley was less than happy with his run after his excellent marathon, but he can be content that he was a vital fourth scorer in the team competition that LBAC also won.

The next battle on the course was between Adam Haylock, running his first half marathon since he took up running properly(!) and Gary Stratford, who has run every single club road championship this year and is correspondingly running pretty consistently. In the last couple of miles, Gary finally got past Adam, having been chasing him throughout the race, but Adam held on just enough that he had the energy on the final lap of the track to sneak back past him, despite them having identical chip times of 1:26:03.

As had been the case for much of the race, Joe, Nick and Chris all finished within 42 seconds of each other for steady runs on the day and were in that finishing order all around the 1:33 mark.

The final male club member to complete the race was Mark Haynes who flew down the finishing straight as he searched for another HM PB after recently getting one in Ealing. His very strong sprint was necessary for the PB but earned him exactly that as he ducked underneath it by 79 seconds in 1:51:31.

With a diversity of training this year for lots of different reasons, all the ladies were unsure as to how they were going to perform today, but as it turned out they all put in fantastic performances. The only one not to get a PB was Jane who still ran a respectable 1:45 despite having been injured for months and putting off a scan on her leg to run!

Kate Johnson only joined the club a few weeks ago and has already done two races with us and has brought cakes on both occasions. This is enough to make her a very welcome addition to the club, but she is also improving very quickly too. Today's finishing time of 2:02:36 represents a 24 – yes 24 – minute PB for the 13.1 distance. Make the most of it Kate, that will never happen again!

Similarly to Kate, Nikki Elvin (together with Glen) has really thrown herself into club activities and despite a lack of training in recent weeks she also smashed her PB by 14 minutes and got under two hours for the first time with 1:57:43. She was hoping to be under 2:10 so this was yet another great result.

Finally, the race for the ladies club championship was a closely fought between Kate Owens and Amy. There was less than 20 seconds between them for the majority of the race with them swapping positions a couple of times on route. In the last couple of miles though, Amy just managed to find the extra strength to pull away slightly, as they came home in 1:38:40 and 1:39:31 respectively. This represented big PB's for both of them and is a great sign for our ladies teams going foward.

So all in all, the race was a huge success for the club and everyone who ran can be rightly proud of their efforts. That's it for the club road race championships for 2013 and we can really focus on the cross-country season.

Full results are available here; http://www.sportsystems.co.uk/ss/results/Stevenage%20Half%20Marathon/1307