Race 1 Hereford Summer off road League Kinnersley

Race Reports

A hot, humid evening following a couple of days of bad weather brought out a record number of 171 runners for the first race in the 2015 Herefordshire summer league in Kinnersley. Mike has worked hard over previous weeks over seeing the preparation of the course and it was well marked and hazard free and familiar, freindly marshalls encouraged us Crofties round.

As always with these races it is difficult to do a report from the whole clubs point of view but with a bit of help from Mike, I will do my best.

The men did us proud – Stacey was the first Croft runner home in 5th place which may have been better had he had a better starting position and not such a cautious start.

Marks Iron Man training seems to be paying off as he is returning to form. He may have gone off a little fast at the start and his position of 6th suggests that he and Stacey may have had a bit of their own personal race.

Toby, our youngest runner on Wednesday admits to not having done any training due to being in the middle of his exams, came in 11th place, unfortunately just being beaten (by only 6 seconds!) by fellow junior Matthew Yapp of Ludlow runners. Hopefully Toby will be finishing his exams soon and be able to get training and beat him next time.

Gemma finishes the Croft A team and ran well on legs heavy from the Snowdon half marathon a couple of days before. I am not sure I would be able to run at all for days following that.

New member Pawel lead the Croft B team with a very promising 14th position in his first race in Croft colours. Just a few more of Mikes training sessions and I am sure we will see him creeping up the results tables. Greg’s marathon training has been helping, as he continues to improve, finishing in his highest Herefordshire league position of 20th. Neil Powell was the third male member of the team having been hard at work preparing the course along with Tom and Richard. Sue Powell was the female member of the B team. She is improving year upon year, race after race. She finished over 2 minutes quicker this year than last and more frustratingly, I couldn’t keep up with her!

Martin continues to run well leading home the C team along with Dave George, running under form with a calf injury and (in Mikes words) ‘hobbling’ across the finish line. Ben Reese decided to celebrate his birthday by running the race with his family supporting. Always great to have the children there. Liz was the final member of this team, not running up to full strength as training has taken second place to the new twin members of her family.

Dave A, Ashley, Rich and myself made up the next team. Ashley ran a great race which he always does if injury free. Dave isn’t running at his best – its hard for us NHS dentists to fit in the training! I have heard that Richard may be making a move to sunnier climates soon, so this may be his last Herefordshire summer league series. I hope we see some more of him before he goes. As for me, these hot evening races after a busy day at work are always hard going. Not my best run but I always feel great at the finish line.

Frank and Tom are both running in lots of races and continue their improving form. No one is continuing to improve as much as Carol though, 10 minutes off her time from last year! It is great to see her getting such fantastic improvements from all her hard work.

Rachel was struggling with cramp at one stage and unfortunately Clare had to pull out due to the high pollen count causing breathing problems.

A great Croft turn out both for runners, marshals and supporters. It was great to see Irena back from her travels, lets hope she gets some training in and soon joins us for the rest of the summer league races. A big thanks to Mike for all his hard work and for staying up half the night working out the results.

It is worth mentioning that if the same scoring method was used for the summer league as the winter one then we would have won the mens race. There are some very strong runners in the other clubs so we are going to need to step up our game if we are going to finish near the top of the table by the end of the summer league, but lets continue to get a good turnout and make sure we all enjoy these races.

Fingers crossed for a cooler evening (and an easy day at work!) for the Abbeydore race.

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