Results round-up - January 2020

Many thanks to David Chalfen for writing this, and congratulations to everyone involved.

 

Two real standouts in recent weeks are both from the Telford 10k where Callan Moody set a superb new club record of 28.57, a real step change (with massive respect to Nick Torry), placing 3rd, whilst Will Green fresh from hitting the V45 category ran a PB of 30.30, fourth on the UK All Time lists for V45s. Martin O Connell also ran excellently with 31.24, in one of the strongest depth 10ks in the UK.

 The previous day a slightly stronger Serpie troop than the earlier season races went to the third Met League at Hillingdon. Improving youngster Jonah Kramer edged the U17 race, his first win at this level and a real boost for the Juniors. Jonathan Poole led the men home in 17th, with Chris Phillips-Hart in 35th and Hugh Torry the leading Serpie V40 in 48th. Amongst the women, Vic Crawford had a fine run to place 17th, backed up by Sarah Pemberton in 23rd, with Tash Sheel in 24th in a far more spread out women's field.

The Valencia marathon is becoming one of the world’s strongest and the club had a posse there.  Serpie newbie Fabio Gelbcke hacked 17 minutes off his PB with a very even 2.33.36. Nic Besson found the timeline since Toronto in late October a little too tight to repeat and clocked 2.37. Close behind was an excellent run by Catalonian pacemeister Dan de Palol, 2.38.07 in the V45s. Isaac Leigh improved nicely to 2.43.19, fast enough to suggest the acute pressure of Committtedom hasn’t yet ground him down.

Also going well is Kit Grierson: a PB of 15.33 at the Ladywell 5000 and two weeks later at the Victoria Park Half another PB of PB 73.05, a close second. At the Clapham Christmas 5000 first Serpie was Richard Purdy in a PB of 16.15.

Jonathan Poole notched up another winning Gunnersbury parkrun, with 15.22, whilst a week earlier Molly Taylor, a new member on, apparently, her club debut did very well with 18.46 to win Hackney Marshes parkrun.

Andy Greenleaf led home the field with 15.26 at the latest Last Friday 5k, his first race win as a new dad. The next morning at Battersea Park the Sri Chinmoy 10k brought a fine PB by Andrea Fraquelli, in 3rd place with 32.36. Next of the numerous Serpie regulars was James Gillanders 34.53 while long-termer Richard Taylor set a PB of 35.16, hard earned based on his extensive 10k listings on Serpiebase, and Emilie Isaacs ran strongly, logging 39.41 as first Serpie woman.

Late November parkrunners were led by Ben Tolputt winning in 16.49 at Long Eaton whilst Marina Johnson did likewise in Pegwell Bay with a strong 19.00. Not exactly Serpie-related but first woman at the Bethlem Royal Hospital was  Kelly Holmes with 20.09, which the parkrun data describes as her 'best annual achievement' though if memory serves she didn’t have too bad a time of it in 2004.

 David Chalfen

Submitted: 20 December 2019

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