Hello all, and welcome to your Weekly CARC Update – bringing you all the weekly Croft shenanigans straight to your inboxes and social media feeds!
It was a hot, hot week, with temperatures beginning to climb back to heatwave levels. Some may say that there was plenty of “sizzling” runs across the club!
It was all started on Monday with Junior Training. Their session. which began at 5:30pm, was almost perfect conditions, warm but not too hot. There was a smaller group but everyone worked hard even if there was some approaching end of term weariness and niggling injuries.
As for our Seniors, there was only one training session this week, taking place on Thursday with Tim at the helm, at he put on a Sprint Session at our Croft Castle stomping ground!
Tuesday’s regular training session was replaced by Race 4, and the first of the trail races at Bircher Common, in this year’s Handicap Series. A full report on the evening can be found here, written by Mike B! It was a busy evening with 42 runners taking part, 2 of these were Junior runners, 6 runners made their course debuts, 10 PBs were set and 4 Age Records were beaten! Well done to Max, Paul L and Irina who were the Top 3 finishers on the night! The penultimate race takes place in August!
Next we’ll have a quick catchup with our Fell Runners!
Saffi ran at the Stipperstones Fell Race on Wednesday, finishing 1st FU16 in the Junior Race. Following on from this, she also ran at the Pen y Fan Fell Race on Saturday, finishing 1st in her age category in a time of 26:26!
5 other Croft runners also ran in the Senior race at Pen y Fan – braving the scorching heat to run in what was a British and Welsh Championship Race.
Results:
Sam Mayglothling – 39:46 – 1st in Age
Matt Edwards (Racing Second Claim with Mercia Fell Runners) – 59:10
Tim Jones – 01:01:09
Flora Gunner – 01:03:11 – 3rd in Age
Gary Gunner – 01:31:40 – 1st in Age
Moving onto everybody’s favourite – Parkrun Saturday! Our Sky Blues could be seen at 6 different Parkruns over the weekend. Jamie Symonds was furthest away from home at Lancaster, Mike Bending was at Wyre Forest and Kath Hardwick at Mallards Pike, Gloucestershire. Closer to home Casper C came in 5th overall and led in CARC’s pack of 8 runners, Sam Juson was the sole Croftie at Hereford where he was first across the line, there were 4 from CARC at Queenswood including Angus Kirby making his managed return. It’s great to see both Kath and Angus make their returns to running after long layoffs.
On Sunday, 10 Crofties were repping the hot and sweaty look as they hit up the streets, lanes, tracks, fields and steps around Ludlow and surrounding villages. Paul L took on the Half Marathon, with Angus in the 5k. Everyone else ran in the 10k. Well done to our runners for taking part, and to those who finished in the Top 3 of their Age Categories. Full results can be found on Ready, Set, Go Timing!
Participants, Winners and Age Category Top 3’s:
5k:
Angus Kirby – 3rd in Age
10k:
Jo Tilby – 2nd Female & 2nd in Age
Mike Bending – 3rd in Age
Jamie Symonds – 3rd in Age
Liza Austin – 2nd in Age
Steph King
Tori Dickinson
Rob Martin
Christina La Monica
Half:
Paul Lewis
Lou P was down in the Alpes over the weekend taking part in the GTC 55. She said:
“What an absolutely incredible day! A really brilliant beast of a race! My only plan was to (obviously) finish, get some alpine running practice in for this year’s big race and a finish time starting with a 12:. BOOM!!! 11:24:49 was my chip time but much more importantly, I’m really pleased with how it went. I coped well on the monster climbs, actually overtook some people on the gnarly descents, and we even had a bit of kit checking with a thunderstorm and a hailstorm thrown in (hence the lack of pics – I was freezing and the hailstones were so big they stung my skin through my waterproof jacket!) UTMR is over 3 times the distance and has well over 3 times the elevation of today’s race and until today I wasn’t sure I had any business being on the start line … perhaps I do after all!”
Rounding out this week’s report is Eric who ran at Chirk 10k on Sunday (for 1st Claim Club – BaD). After finishing 3rd, with a time of 35:00, he said:
“Another hilly 10km on the cards, just a week after Cleobury 10km. This one had three proper climbs that were very tasty and definitely broke me a little! I’m really happy with how the race went. It was great to be in a proper race again, and it’s given me even more confidence heading into the Magor 10km in two weeks’ time.”
That’s all we have for this week. If you have been doing something that you would like included in the weekly roundup please let Bronwyn, Huw, Sam H or Tori know before 6pm on a Sunday.
We are always on the lookout for race reports to go on the website too. They do not need to be huge, or even go into too much detail, but let us know where you went and how it went for you together with a couple of photos and make our website current and up to date.