Results round-up - October
Many thanks to David Chalfen for his write-up of some recent highlights and congratulations to everyone involved.
The Southern 6 stage was another red letter day for the men’s A team, placing a tremendous 2nd to the crack Aldershot squad, over legs of 16-17 minutes which tends to favour the track clubs over the road/marathon types as Serpentine tends to be. A very balanced squad, notable for a super leg by Nick Torry who kept the team in touch with the top handful and from then it was a consistent four legs, medalling even without Jonathan Poole. The timing was handy with Callan Moody and Tony Payne setting out for Doha two days later where Tony has a lively Saturday night booked in imminently. The spread of the guys’ times enabled various tortuous discussions over why the conversion of 5000m track times to this leg of around 5.6/5.7k seemed less than empirical.
Earliest leading individual result since the last update was at the Great North Run where Chris Oddy 23rd in a sizeable PB of 67.16.
A week earlier, Nick Torry led the parkrunners with a fine 15.07 at Dulwich, whilst Kevin Murray at 60 years old zipped round in 18.59 at Black Rock.
Three days later came the final call on the track season (for those who hadn’t secured Doha selection) with a nice swathe of PBs at Highgate 5000s, Joost Vogel 15.55 hacking through the 16 minute barrier, Tim Powell 16.37, and Gideon Reid V40 at 16.47.
At the Copenhagen Half the Serpies laid off the World Record pace of Mr Kamworor and Ahlem Ben Gueblia took a chunk off her PB with 85.14 whilst Chris Wright edged back closer to normal service with 68.42.
Jon Poole bounced back with the customary annual victory at his local Ealing Half on 29th September, 70.14 on the hilly windy route with Nic Besson back towards his own top form with 70.52 in a close 3rd place. Never one to confine himself to just one race per weekend, Nic had zipped to 15.29 to head the Serpies in the latest Last Friday 5k, placing 3rd.
The same day as Ealing, the Club 10k champs were wrapped up within the Middlesex 10k at Victoria Park. A flat course, albeit on a windy morning, saw Chris Wright fresh from winning Fulham Parkrun the previous day in 16.05, continued his return to better form with a fine 31.33 for 5th place, with the team (narrowly edged into third place) completed by Martin O Connell, 8th with 32.56 and Scott O Connor, 10th in 33.06. Good runs also from Richard Purdy, with 34.18 and leading V40s James Gillanders 34.57 and Jeremy Agnew 35.21.
Berlin started the main block of the autumn marathon season, where Kevin Murray’s 3.08 (he is still 60, just as he was a few lines above) seems very swift to not crack 80% age grading.
As we head into October, your reporter has to pretend that he is just as happy on a cold, wet, windswept muddy heath as he is standing trackside in T short and shirts and never more than 50 paces from the beer tent. Roll on the cross country season. Honest.
David Chalfen
Isaac Leigh
running@serpentine.org.uk
Submitted: 2 October 2019