Week Ending - 2024/12/01

TOP GUNS OUT IN FORCE AT MAVERICK

The Oxfordshire Maverick Series took place at the weekend with several Badgers gracing the event as they celebrated Mark Cox’s accession to the vet men’s team. The dirty-diesel-powered Ultra runner turned forty on the day of the race and many of his teammates were there alongside him and supporting him. In the 22K long-distance event, Ryan Preece, who took over from Cox as men’s team captain, had a fine race to take second overall despite a myriad of organisational misadventures which led to athletes taking wrong turns aplenty. Some goose decided to change or move the signage which led to brave Preece having to dig deep to hold off a strong challenge from the third-placed athlete, crossing the line in 1:40:04, when he was cruising earlier on. Top Gun Adrian Payne won the vets race in 1:45:31, good enough for forth overall, beating off Cox on his birthday and coming strongly at the finish. Cox himself took a creditable 10th five minutes later, still scalping the likes of MARM and Ashley T-Dogg Taylor. Liberty Underhill’s hard training of late began to pay dividends with a very well-earned fifth-placed female overall in a touch over 2 hours. Sara Wilson marked her return from injury with a quality 2:14 alongside Dave Jenkinson, to take 3rd V40 female in the event. Colin Lees ran 1:15 in the 13K middle distance category while the impressive Megan Church looked good as she finished in 1:30, three minutes ahead of veteran ace Pip Weston who took third in her age bracket in 1:33. 

At the Cardington Cracker 9-mile fell race in Shropshire, Eric Fowler was in fine form, picking up the V60 prize in a competitive field with wife Eleanor also going superbly in the ladies competition, winning her age category too. 

Parkrun saw plenty of action, none more so than at Walsall Arboretum, where there was a fistful of PBs. Glyn Broadhurst took 9th place overall as he helped to pace youngster Alex Haywood to a superb sub-18 minute PB, the duo both recording wava ratings in excess of 80%. The Repton brothers also both ran PBs, younger sibling Mark taking 10th overall in 18:01, agonisingly close to a sub-18 time while older brother Wayne ran 20:07, a great new best, again extremely close to a sub-20 – maybe their time will come in the future. 

Ladies captain Megan Griffiths had two reasons to celebrate, firstly, she ran the 200th parkrun of her storied career. When she made her debut six and a half years ago at Kingsbury, she clocked 31:08. Now, under the tutelage of key man and coach Glyn Broadhurst, her best time has been reduced to a staggering 21:18, almost TEN minutes quicker, an incredible journey of improvement. A milestone and a PB in the same race, oh, and a top-ten finish also! There were top ten finishes at Kingsbury for long-serving Badgers Nivette Chester and Liz Peel, while Rachel “Crumpy” Crump and Victoria Jones both hit the heights of the top ten at Tamworth Castle Grounds, let that be known. 

And a handful of Badgers even made the trip to Dublin, Ireland to run the Malahide parkrun at the slightly later start time of 9:30am as is the case there. Juliette Trollope, Fiona Reidy and Peter Mann were amongst those Badgers out in force on the Emerald Isle. 

A delay in results processing meant that last week we were unable to report Eric Fowler’s magnificent run in the Benidorm half marathon. The former Nuneaton Harriers star enjoyed his trip to the Iberian peninsula to seek some winter sun and turned in a marvellous time of 94:35, taking three minutes off fellow sun-seeking V60 star Martyn Barrett’s very best for the distance set back in 2019, to give him his fourth club record at the V60 bracket.