The Ladies do it Again

It was a dreary and damp morning that the 28 members of the four LBAC teams and respective soloists awoke to on Saturday. This was in complete contrast to all the previous Greensand Ridge Relay's since the dawn of time, which have always been held on the hottest day of the year.

There were four brave/foolish club members who had decided that a 33 mile jaunt across Bedfordshire in the height of summer would be a really good idea and correspondingly they were the first four to start, with Ian Hosley going off in lovely conditions at 10:30am followed by Joe Hurley at 11:30, Stuart Blofeld at 11:45 and Pete Mackrell at 12:00, just as the sun was starting to burn off the clouds. All these chaps were aiming for the same 5pm finish that the teams were targetting, but with none of them having done the event before it was something of a guess.

Starting just beind Pete at 12:05 was Chris Dimmock for the Guys & Doll team, made up of entirely of the club's veterans. The second of our teams for the off was our defending ladies champions, headed up by Laura Smith who shot off down the canal at 12:19. Steve Harrison from the Fun Runners had been roped in to help out our second men's team at 12:42, before Simon Coombes started plum last for the Buzzard Bolts, although he was alongside former British number 3 marathon runner Huw Lobb, who was taking on the full distance.

John O’Callaghan 5

On Friday evening four LBAC members went down to Luton for the first race in the Luton AC road race series, which was the John O'Callaghan 5. Jane Sauer intended to use the race as a gentle warm-up for the relay on the following day, but after going 1:30 minutes quicker than planned for the first mile just decided to race around. This was a pretty good idea in the end as she completed the course in 37:43 and earned herself a new PB.

Behind Jane, Dave Adams snuck out for his second race of the year and is clearly developing some serious pace off the back of all his day time training as he completed the course in 41:03, which is 8:12mpm. If we're not careful, he'll be out to win the Stag this year! read more

Weedon 10K

By Chris Williams

For the penultimate race of the East Midlands grand prix series, the three musketeers ventured off to Weedon, and arguably the most feared and daunting of all the series races. A 10k consisting of 8km of uphill and the last 2km of serious downhill!

It was always going to be Pat's race, having won his age category at Harborough last week, even his warm up this week took in some of hills of the course! In fact the only thing that caused him concern was where to hide the car key; at one point both he and Richard were underneath the front of the car looking for a suitable hiding place! read more

Cross Country Dates

The dates for all of this winter's cross-country fixtures have been released. Please put them in your diaries now! All of these are team events and we had great success last year by getting as many runners attending as we possibly could. They are also pretty good fun and are the main occasions in the year where we compete alongside the junior athletes in the club.

The December date is even more important than usual as five of the regular scoring team will be missing the event due to the club trip to Lanzarote. Sorry! read more

Marston Forest 5K

Last Friday night saw the running of the Marston Forest 5K around the forest that is located between Milton Keynes and Bedford. The club only had two entries in the race organised by Ampthill & Flitwick Flyers.

Whilst many people will not know Helen Crossland, she has been out representing the club at quite a few races this year and on this occasion made her way around the 3.1 mile course in 33:35 and made the top 300.

Simon Coombes has been focusing in recent months on the shorter races that are around and is getting quicker and quicker, despite approaching veteran status! On this cool damp night, the conditions suited Simon perfectly and he took the lead very early on and never looked back. Throughout the race Simon gradually pulled away from the rest of the field crossed the finishing line in a fantastic 15:57, nearly 30 seconds ahead ahead of his nearest challenger. read more

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