It is the first of the summer relays this weekend around Milton Keynes. Nearly everyone has checked out their respective legs now so all should be ready to go. The organiser is a chap from MKAC called Alec Walliker and he has built a website with details on, which includes all the entries, predictions and start times. You can find it here. Please remember though that all the predicted times are only guesses and you'll need to be there a little bit beforehand.
Four Inchley's and their Dave went to run in Bedford………
Tuesday night saw Amy, Richard and Andy abandon the usual MK training in favour of the third race in the East Midlands Grand Prix Series in Bedford. They managed to drag Tom along for his second run in the series and Dave Adams also made his annual pilgrimage to the 6 mile event.
Organised by Bedford & County AC, the run is based from the athletic stadium but is entirely traffic free as it utilses the park paths around the A421. The conditions for the race were almost perfect, although a gentle westerley wind meant the last couple of miles were into it, but it was far from a howling gale. The course has just two small hills as runners cross the bypass twice over a foot bridge so all in all it should have been a really good race!
Thirteen hardy souls braved the outskirts of Luton to take part in this year's county athletics championships at Stockwood Park. On the seniors front, the ladies 3000m and the men's 5000m were also the annual club championships.
The first event on the card where we had competitors was the U15 girls high jump, in which new member Leoni Ring cleared 1.25 to finish fourth. Leoni then continued her competitive day by taking part in both the 100m and 200m. In the 200m she qualified for the final, despite it being at the end of a very long day after she had run the 100m. In the 100m she put in an excellent performance to earn a silver medal, just 0.3 seconds behind the winner and being a year young in the age group. Leoni clearly has a huge amount of potential to bring out in the coming years.
By Gail Duckworth
I ran my first city 10k race yesterday in Bristol, which is not quite as big as Manchester but still about 11000 runners this year. Everything you expect from a mass participation event very well organised and lots of atmosphere. It starts and finishes in the Millennium Square which is right on the quayside. I was in the first wave on the white start which was fine it took me about 5 seconds to cross the line behind many elite runners! The course if fairly flat but I found the wind tough heading out which seemed to also be in your face on the way back until you were right in the city centre. Funny it doesn’t seem to affect the winning men, with 28 mins 39 secs by the first Kenyan. Anyway, dipped under 39 mins again but only by 1 second (38 mins 59 secs) but good enough to be 1st W55 by 10 minutes! The bonus of a big race was the prize money – not enough to live on, but certainly worth the trip down there!
Sunday saw the family Dimmock rise early post presentation and venture north to Peterborough to the old stomping ground of the Fens at Eye. After some rain during the night and an overcast start to the day, a stiff wind cleared the clouds for another bright but not too hot event. 520 runners including Chris and brother Stuart lined up looking forward to a flat course with only a couple of tight turns and a short cross country section to upset the rythm. Setting off at planned sub sevens all was going well until the early head wind and lack of sleep took their toll for Chris on mile 5. Finishing strongly brought him in at 97th with a time of 43.29. Stuart ran a solid even pace to come home in the top half of the field in 51.41.
