Endurance Running

Competition

Serpentine organises participation in many different races and leagues throughout the year: road races, weekend relays, cross country races, trail races and lots more. For many of the major races, leagues and championships, Serpentine often pays the entry fees and organises teams. The vast majority of races, however, are entered individually by Serpies with no involvement from the club. When entering races, always specify your club name — SERPENTINE — and race in club colours.

The Big Half 2018

To plan your future races look at the Serpentine Race Planner, which tries to list all the running, triathlon, duathlon, cycling, cross country, track & field events that could be of interest to Serpies in the coming months. Use MyEvents to see who else is racing and tell others you are going.

Many Serpies travel far and wide for racing, particularly for marathons and Ironman triathlons. If you're going to a foreign race and they ask for a medical certificate, there's a template in our Health & Fitness section.

In recent years we have:

  • Achieved some of the highest placings in the England Athletics marathon team championship (based on the cumulative times of our first three qualifying finishers at the London marathon) – our men were first in 2018 and 2019, second place in both 2015 and 2016, third in 2017, and fourth in 2014, whilst our women came first in 2014 and sixth in 2019.
  • Our men's team also came first in the UKA half marathon championships held within the Big Half in 2018 and 2019, and both our men and women's teams came second in the UKA 10k road championships held within the Vitality London 10000 in May 2018.
  • Finished second place at the March 2017 South of England 12 Stage Men’s Relays, where we also had the second-fastest B team which came 17th overall.
  • Had six Serpentine members run for their country at senior events in recent years, in particular Nick Torry ran for England in the 2014 Commonwealth Games and most recently Jonathan Poole ran for England at the October 2017 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.
  • Recorded six male club members running below 2:25 in the marathon since January 2015, including three running below 2:22 in 2017 alone.
  • Meanwhile our women runners have run five marathons under three hours just in 2017, and again in 2018, and strong club records have recently been set from 5k to half marathon.

Training

The club has a large range of training options throughout the week: coached on- and off-track sessions and uncoached sessions at several venues, and various social club runs. See our weekly diary for an overview.

For experienced athletes, as well as high-performance coaching, many faster members meet for group training on Thursdays and Sundays.