Club Records, PBs and Debuts Galore

EAL Fixture 3 – Cambridge

by David Killick

Before the detail some simple stats:

4 club records broken, 8 debuts in a club top and roughly 25 PBs broken.

Keeping this brief will be difficult so anyone not mentioned many apologies now but I have been asked to limit my ramblings. (Not by me! Ed.)

At U11s we started the day with 6 athletes, ended up with 8 (6 girls and 2 boys) as 2 juniors there decided it looked fun and wanted to do it. Unfortunately this got me into trouble with the league for having too many athletes in events… I did my grovelling and have taken the penalty we have from the league committee (more on that later) and no, I am not sorry for encouraging children to participate in sport when athletics is in decline at a younger level (it was my admin error on not checking the rules as I got carried away with the excitement!)  What a great job they did and had a wonderful time and the 3 girls who did the 4x100m relay for the U13 girls did so with a massive smile, which is what it is all about! read more

Ashridge Trail Half Marathon

Ashridge Trail Half Marathon

by Sam Dear

Last week I was looking through the list of races in the Off-Road Series and realised that I’d actually only raced the Rushmere parkrun and the Round MK Relay. I didn’t think I’d ever do enough to come close to winning the thing, but decided that I needed to get involved in a few more and finish in a respectable position so entered the Ashridge Trail Half.

I’d recently run about 10 miles and felt fine so figured I’d make it round a half. What I didn’t realise though was that I hadn’t actually run more than 10 miles since November 6th when I ran 10.8miles… before that, my longest run was the Berlin marathon in September… so let’s just say I was a little out of practice. read more

Round MK Relay 2017

Round MK Relay 2017

by James Bell

Alan Turing, mathematician and computer scientist of Bletchley Park fame, once said that ‘We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.‘  How prophetic he was. Perhaps you don’t know but Turing was an avid runner whose best marathon time was 2:46.  Maybe, just maybe, the tow paths that were run over the weekend were also used by Turing to train.  In any case, I think he would have liked the fact that runners would orbit the great city like possessed electrons zooming round a 31 mile course. read more

ECCA President

Today was the English Cross-Country Association’s annual open meeting. The ECCA is fairly important in the world of athletics in England  and is responsible for:

  • Organising and managing all English national cross country championships.
  • Selecting athletes to represent England in cross country competition and managing those teams.
  • Promoting and supporting the development of cross country running.

They also confirm a new president or the year. This is an honourary title given to people who have contributed hugely to the sport over a number of years.

The new president only took up running in his late 30’s after entering the 1983 London marathon a subsequently New York in the same year. Despite tennis being his main sport in those days, a house move meant that he left his long-time tennis club. The following year he joined a small local athletics club with two of his sons, and almost immediately took on the fledgling junior section which included them and he oversaw this for a number of years. read more

Couch to 5k and a Little Bit More

MK Half Marathon

by Susan Johnson

I don’t think there are too many youngsters who take up running at the age of 60 but yep, that’s me!  There I was approaching retirement with colleagues suggesting I would be able to find new hobbies and slow down.  Sounded good to me but where to start?  I’d heard about parkrun and decided to give it a go.  Run, walk was my first attempt (and a few more).  Now, less than three years later and 102 parkruns completed, along with other races in between, I was approaching the start line for my first half marathon at the MK Marathon Weekend.  This was kind of surreal, this was 13.1 miles! read more

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