Week Ending - 2024/07/21

INTREPID BADGERS RACE TO THE STONES

Club stalwart Karen Thompson stepped out of her comfort zone to take on the challenging 100k 'Race to the Stones'. The event which takes place along the Ridgeway, the oldest path in Britain, starting at Lewknor on the edge of the Chilterns in Oxfordshire and finishing at the 5000-year-old Avebury standing stones. Various distances are available with the most challenging being the full distance straight through which Karen, fellow Badger Mark Cordinor, a veteran of 6 previous occasions, and his mate Paul, chose as their preferred option. With a start list of over 1200 competitors but a retirement rate of over 15% and an elevation of over 1,300m, our intrepid trio managed a superb time of 22:58:39 . Karen said the whole event was so well organised and the pitstops as well as the views on route were fantastic and their pit crew of Maggie and John Savin-Baden were second to none "I still can't quite believe I've done it", same again next year then?.

Much nearer to home and a more manageable distance for us mere mortals parkrun also provided some noteworthy performances. Sara Wilson travelled north to Leazes parkrun in Newcastle and although not a PB on this undulating course, still managed to finish 1st lady. Kingsbury Water Park also provided some outstanding performances with Chris Young (21:47), Paul Cooper (24:10) and Steph Phillips (31:50) all managing waterpark PB's, with Steph also managing 1st in age. Walsall parkrun once again provided some excellent times with both Grace Barsby (24:16) and Kate Rathbone (34:36) smashing out PB's with Grace also making the top 10. The fastest parkrunning Badger of the weekend came at Long Eaton where new member Mark Jarvis, followed up his (19:06) 4th place finish at Bedworth last week by smashing out a time of 18:37, not a pb but his fastest time for over 5 years.