Our Spring racing frenzy

This year our key local races have been back-to-back when usually they are a little more spaced out. Some of our members have done all of them too – whilst training for spring marathons. (One thing about us runners, is that we have mastered the art of suffering in the quest for those delicious endorphins).

So, first up was a big one – big in terms of distance, but relatively small in terms of number of participants. The Bramley 10/20 is organised by Reading Road Runners and is largely used by club runners in training for spring half and full marathons. The course takes two loops, starting at a Bramley school and incorporating a nice series of hills that unfortunately arise towards the end of each loop. (Ouch). This year, the weather was good, and a great time was had by all. Congratulations to David Simpson and Jason Minns for PBs in the 20 miler, great results for their forthcoming marathons.

Bearing in mind Farnborough Half Marathon was the week before Bramley, next up was the Wokingham Half. Typically, this is known for yielding a good few PBs, but you can’t choose your race weather, and this was a particularly blowy day, with winds hitting up to 50 mph at just about the same time as most runners hit the final three miles. Ah well, there’s always next year.

The next week’s event gave a little distance respite to the “run them all crowd” in the form of the Festival Place 5K. This one does what it says on the tin and takes the runners through the shopping centre – a pursuit usually just reserved for toddlers and bank robbers? James “super” Cooper secured a PB and Sue Graves was 2nd in the 70+ female age category with a beautifully run sub-30-minute run.

And finally, for the big club events at least, came the local favourite, Fleet Half Marathon. Despite all that went before, the turnout was a still solid as were the performances. Amanda Harse and Emma Bartlett both secured sub 2-hour PBs.

Phew! So that’s the usual local events. On top of this we had a few runners doing their own thing in various locations. We had one roaming to Rome, Zerrin took part in the marathon there. Jess Pilgrim achieved a marathon PB at Dorney lake and a few weeks later another at the Surrey Half. Nice!

And so, we move to our AGM, graduation of our latest group of new runners and then its Spring Marathon madness.

The road is long and we’re running it.