Bryans 80th Birthday Bash

Race Reports
Saturday 4th July 2020 was the 80th Birthday of Croft Ambrey Running Club legend Bryan Markham.
One of the founding members of the club, Bryan has been an active member from the start in 1982, taking on the role of treasurer for many years and even bailing the out the club in times of hardship. He was editor of a club newsletter which was printed out for club members and is currently our club president and very kindly lets us have committee meetings and social events at his house.
He is still running well at the tender age of 80, takes part in the winter and summer leagues and is a regular at Ludlow Parkrun.
Unfortunately the Covid pandemic severely restricted our plans to celebrate Bryans birthday in style so everyone was asked to use their imagination and come up with a run with an 80 theme and posting it on the club Facebook page where hopefully Bryan saw all the wonderful messages.
What a creative bunch Croft Ambrey runners are! Below in no particular order is a summary of the messages people left on facebook.
Athletic runs are unfortunately in Mike B’s past so he planned to celebrate 80 in style by drinking 8 cups of tea in 80 minutes!
The GPS artworks were a thing of beauty – lots of 80’s run around the Herefordshire countryside and then mapped on Strava.
Mark P did a training session of warm-up, drills pick-ups and then 10×8 second alactic hill sprins with full recovery followed by a cooldown.
Sonia included an 8minute mile in her run of the day and posted ‘Happy 80th Birthday Bryan Markham 🥳🎈
John Jaspers left a lovely video message for Bryan on a very windy Hergest Ridge.
Alice said ‘Happy 80th birthday Bryan!! You are such an inspiration!!’ And run an ’80’ while wearing a picture of Bryan, she also posted a little video clip, which I am sure Bryan enjoyed!
Mike Powell posted Happy birthday Bryan 🎉.
Rob and Sue Wood ran ran for over 80 minutes in Croft woods with 800ft elevation which included 8 hill reps of Heartbreak Hill! Their daughter Kim ran an 8 mile route in Bryans honour a few days later as she was busy on her paramedic shift at the weekend.
Heather, Theresa, Lisa and Sue ran an 8km route around Kingsland with Bryan together with Balloons and pictures and wished him a ‘super day🎈🎈🎈‘.
I ran a Figure of 0.8mile 80 route in 8minutes.
The Preece family managed a fabulous Strava art ’80th’
Dave George did an 8 village cycle route.
Some people were completing their run for the virtual Cotswold relay the same weekend and Sue P, Jo , Carol, Liza and Toby incorporated an 80 into their run and posed with a birthday banner at the start.
Gemma Mallet made her weekly runs total 80 miles, finishing with 20 miles on his birthday – running from Leominster to Kingsland with balloons and a card to deliver to Bryan.
Simon Norwood also went for a weekly total of 80 miles – biking to work for him and her ran 8.8 miles on the day (plus 2km swim) and posted ‘Happy 80th Birthday Bryan our club legend whom keeps swimming, biking and running! What a superstar!’
Naomi and Laura had a joint effort and ran a figure of 8 route in Kingsland 40 times (over 9 miles!) each!
Neil Taylor was able to use the grid system of the Ludlow town centre lanes to comes up with an ’80’ route to run around.
Richard Hornsby ran in his club vest in Spain in Bryans honour.
Kelly, Gemma and Louise and their children set up an ’80’ route at Wigmore school. With the grown ups running 25 laps each and the children running 5 for a total of 80 – with a very creative 80 Bryan on their strava art.
Tory ran a very symetrical 80 on Bircher Common and then added her own artwork to the picture to write out happy birthday.
Flora ran a route in his honour and posted ‘happy birthday Bryan hope did have a great day 🎈🍰🥂🏃🏼‍♀️
I am sorry if I missed copying anyones tributes off facebook and I know others did send their own messages, gifts and cards to Bryan without putting it on facebook, but I wanted to post as many as possible on the website for all to see!
Kelly summed up how we all feel – ‘Bryan you are such an inspiration to all and I’d like to wish you many more years of running ahead of you 🥳🎈🎂🎈🥳x’
Many happy returns Bryan.
(Double click on the photo for a bigger version of the photo collage)

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