Welcome once again to our weekly #MedalMonday 

Cross-country season is well underway and Serpies turned out in force for the London championships on a grey, but thankfully fairly dry, Saturday afternoon on Hampstead Heath. The women were 8th overall over 6k and the men 13th over 10k. Fred Smithers was 12th and Katy Casterton 14th. 

The course and the conditions at the weekend represented x-c at its best: rolling hills with bold – but not too bold – ups and downs, great marshalling coordinated by our own Malcolm, superb organisation and planning and fantastic views of runners and landscapes for all taking part, watching and volunteering.

Afterwards Serpies celebrated with an awards night at a popular Hampstead hostelry where the achievements of one of our most stalwart of runners, pictured here, Avril, number 872, were recognised along with those of others. But more to follow on that in a future posting. 

But that was just one race. Well, two in one, and that’s not even counting the London Youth Games which took place on Saturday morning, where the talent of the youngsters was as always outstanding. 

Improvers groups and friends were also out at the Fulham 10k on Sunday, where V40 Jonathan Poole in 32:17 achieved 87.2 per cent age graded and FV55 Lizzie Wilkinson in 48:26 achieved 75.2 per cent age graded, second in age group and a new PB. Congratulations Lizzie, pictured below.

We had runners in the 5k and 10k at Queen Elizabeth Park on Saturday. Kinarei Yazot, FU20, did the 5k in 23:44 and Lizzie Wilkinson did the 10k in 48:44, beating her husband Kevin in V65 by .01 of a second. Yes, you read that right. Lizzie did one 10k on Saturday and another one on Sunday! And so in fact did Kevan. But there is even more to the story than that. Lizzie and Kevan (48:45) both won their age groups at QEP on Saturday. Kevan reports: ‘Lizzie was set for a 10k PB on Saturday but unfortunately her shoe lace unravelled with 1k to go and missed it by 10 seconds. Hence why I caught her up on the line.’ So of course she had another go on Sunday. As you do! Of the Sunday 10k, Kevan continues: ‘The double day and our 4k run to get to the start took it out of me, I just saw her drifting into the distance.’ 

Ronald Cenejuste was in Deauville for the Normandy Half which he finished in a strong 2:09:38 – totting up this year so far a total of two full marathons, four half marathons in addition to Paris-Versailles and the iconic Green Belt Relay. He reports from France: ‘Great weekend with some high school friends. Always a pleasure to catch up and run with them in one of our local races.’

Clement Chaine ran the Brighton 10k in 46:13, Carla Stokes the Southampton 10k in 41:50, Jacob Shilling the St Neots half in 1:29:03, Mike Smith the Alton Towers half in 1:42:16.

Full results with links to the relevant sites all available on our website.