Leighton Buzzard Athletic Club

Having entered the race months ago, Ann Hirst made the trip over to sunny Ireland last weekend, for the 31^st running of the Dublin marathon. This was to be her debut over the distance and she had mixed fortunes approaching the race. A few weeks of not running made Ann consider not attempting the distance that is more punishing to the unprepared than any other. However, a few solid runs either side of her injury encouraged an apperance on the start line on the Irish bank holiday Monday.

The weather was set fair, if a little chilly and Ann made good time until the 12 mile mark, when the knee that had stopped her training properly started to play up once again. Having gone through the first half in 2:04:44, it was really a case of battling through and making it to the finish and that first pint of Guinness (I am assuming!). Ann felt that she "didn't just hit the wall, she crashed into it!", but although she slowed in the second half, it was far from disastrous consider the knee and she covered the second 13.1 miles in 2:18:16 to give a finish time of 4:23 and a shiny new medal. read more

Last Saturday Amy and Andy decided that it was finally time to give the Milton Keynes Parkrun a go. It is half a mile from home at Willen Lake and is a free, accurately measured 5K that takes place at 9am every Saturday morning. It has only taken 41 weeks for them to make it.

There are 49 different races around the country so you are rarely likely to be too far from one. They are all 5K and very informal, but necessarily all on Saturday morning so check the details for each one individually.

They would highly recommend it to anyone who fancies a FREE low key race on a Saturday morning. All you have to do is go to the website www.parkrun.com and follow the instructions to print out a barcode before 6pm on the Friday. Then just turn up with the barcode at any Parkrun and it will be scanned at the end so the results are recorded. Results are then sent out by e-mail about an hour after the finish and they are really comprehensive. They track how many you have done, your times, give you an age grading and all sorts of other stuff. They even take your photo and put it on the website too as long as you are not Andy (Think the lens may have broken at that moment). read more

Last weekend Pete Mackrell went off on his own to darkest Oxfordshire to take part in the Abingdon marathon. Having been thrawted by injury when runing very well last year, he has kep this plans pretty quiet, but has put in a couple of reasonable performances in the last few weeks.

On what was a cool, dry day with practically no wind, the 9am start was perfect for marathon running and with Pete's eyes firmly fixed on beating Joby's leading marathon time of the year he set off at a good pace. He was hoping that if he didn't slow too much in the second half, he even had a chance of sneaking under 3 hours on the flat rural course. read more

On Sunday, despite having played a very active part in the start of the cross-country season a couple of LBAC runners decided that one race a weekend wasn't enough.

First up, Jane Sauer took on the Herts 10K, which takes place in St Albans in aid of the Grove House charity. Following three weeks without running at all and a bit of a bug this week, she completed the course in 52.51 and was very pleased but unsurprsingly finished with aching legs.

Gary Stratford was the other hard core athlete who clearly felt that the hills of Oxfordshire weren't enough. He therefore made the short trip over to Tring to do the Ridgeway run. This consists of approximately nine miles of off-road running across the Ridgeway, South of Tring and includes a number of "challenging" hills! Gary managed to complete the course in seventy minutes and finished 45^th out of 474 people, with a pretty good effort for the second day running. Roger Seldon was four minutes behind Gary to finish in seventy-four minutes. read more