Club Handicap

54 Serpies turned up to race at the small, but perfectly formed, March handicap last Saturday. Gone were the near-Siberian conditions that had necessitated a postponement from the previous week and, whilst we can’t quite boast the sunshine and blue skies of Lanza, there was plenty to celebrate.

Congratulations go to Jon Knox, James Brown and Kim Nicholson who took gold, silver and bronze respectively – Kim achieving a PB along with her medal.

We toasted an inspiring club landmark run, as Marianne Morris completed her 200th handicap – the first Serpie woman to do so. Marianne ran her first handicap back in October 1993 – she was presented with the much coveted ‘200 Handicaps’ T-shirt to mark her achievement. Congratulations Marianne!

(Photo credit & race report: Kim Boursnell) 

UCA Inter-County Cross Country Championships

Jonah Kramer, representing Middlesex, came an excellent 26th (out of 303 finishers) in the U15 boys race at the Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships on Saturday. The venue was Prestwold Hall, Loughborough and it was a very muddy course. The standard at the Inter-Counties is generally higher than the National, making this a very fine performance. Big up Jonah! (Photo credit: Richard Kramer)

We had a second Serpie competing, Izzy Clark, who was representing Surrey in the Senior Women’s race. She was part of the gold medal winning Surrey team, Izzy finishing in 56th place (6th scorer). Congratulations Izzy! 

Best of the rest

Alex Baird completed the 20 mile course at the MK Festival of Running in a new PB of 2:21:47 (by almost 2 minutes) to finish 6th woman. And Milan Misak was 2nd at the Cambridge Boundary Run Half Marathon in 1:18:13 (a day after coming 3rd at Fulham Palace parkrun in sub 17 no less). Congratulations Alex and Misak!

Parkrun results for 10 March 2018 (55 runners)

Top 5 by time and age-graded performance

Podium finishers

1st: Ben Greene (Thurrock, Orsett Heath) – 18:20, Joanne Marshall (Margate) – 25:44
2nd: Gideon Reid (Wormwood Scrubs) – 20:06
3rd: Milan Misak (Fulham Palace) – 16:54

Milestones and PBs

Zoe Birchenough – 50th parkrun
2 Serpies achieved an event PB: Robert E G Hall (Greenwich) – 20:22, Rachel Loosemore (Fulham Palace) – 24:36 

Busiest parkruns (3+ Serpies)

Highbury Fields (4)

Full consolidated Serpentine results. Can’t see yours? Updating your parkrun profile with Serpentine RC as your club should do the trick. 

I want to hear from you

Writing the weekly round-up is fun but also time-consuming (researching, looking up results, checking Powerof10/RunBritain, sourcing photos, writing, publishing). A few kind souls regularly flag up standout results and help me with other aspects (e.g. parkrun results are kindly provided by Alex Jeffreys each week). To make the weekly round-up sustainable, I need more members to come forward and email me their mini race reports (a few lines is all it takes). Simply drop me an email by Tuesday 9am with a few words about the event and, if you have them, photos (please ask for permission if someone else took the pictures). 

If your result is missing from the club website, you can add it yourself or, if the race isn’t listed in the dropdown menu, contact the Results Elves at results@serpentine.org.uk. Even better, simply add your name to the Race & Event Planner in advance and name SERPENTINE as your club when you enter races to ensure your results are added to your profile.

With thanks to: Kim Boursnell, David Chalfen, Malcolm French, Alex Jeffreys

Sunny greetings from Lanzarote!

Eda Korkmaz
communications@serpentine.org.uk