10ks and Park Run
After eight weeks of training runs in preparation for the Ottery 10k Sidmouth Running Club member Lydia Mansi missed out on the day through illness. Determined that all her training would not be in vain she took herself off to run a 10k course with a target time she had set for Ottery of 1:10:00. Running alone to beat a time is not the easiest thing to do as the support you receive from spectators during a race really spurs you on, so to end up completing the run in 1:09:21 is excellent and as she said “I could not have achieved that without Justin’s training”.
David Skinner on the other hand chose a much more arduous 10k for his first attempt at that distance in The Clyst Hydon Huff. It was lucky that he had not looked at the gradient profiles or realised it involved not only hilly lanes, running through lake sized puddles and also steep muddy ascents in the woods, or he may have had second thoughts.
He came close to losing his shoes in the mud on several occasions and coincidentally his race number was 70 which is also his age. Considering the conditions, he finished in a very respectable time of 1:20:40. Welcome to off-road running David, keep it up and you will be ready for the Grizzly. There were 134 finishers.
Julia Haddrell set yet another personal best at the Seaton park run in a time of 34:42 edging closer to her goal of a sub 30 minutes.
Sunday sees the Women Can Marathon take place from Tipton St John with Sidmouth Running Club having the largest number of club competitors and we all wish them a successful day.