Joan stamps her authority on Brighton

I intentionally delayed this blog post in the hope that Joan would respond to my request for some information and a few quotes about how she found her Brighton Marathon experience, but as this modest little lady has not been too forthcoming in commenting on her successes, it's been left to Dave Eveleigh and I to vaunt her achievement in our own words, on her behalf!

While Exmouth Harriers club-mate, ladies team captain and now fellow quintogenerian, Dawn Teed, traveled to the middle of the South Atlantic to post an impressive marathon performance, Joan Mason went instead to the heart of the South of England for hers.

With the London Marathon always massively oversubscribed and the average club level runner finding it hard to secure a place, the nearby Brighton Marathon, that takes place 1 week before, is growing in popularity year on year. This was the third year of its running and this time round over 9000 runners took to its streets and promenade to run this relatively flat race that offers some fantastic sea views over the course of the 26.2 miles. 

To the best of my knowledge, this was Joan's first marathon (would need her to confirm this!). But as far as preparation goes, she could not have equipped herself any better. A new half-marathon PB of 1:53:21set in her marathon build up at Bideford in March this year showed that she had the speed over half the distance, this, when combined with a dedicated training regime that incorporated long runs, tempo runs and recovery runs, ensured that she had a strong race in Brighton and did credit to herself and the club by posting 4:21:18. Joan was "really pleased" with this performance as she had not been expecting to break the 4:30 barrier, but her 1:53 half indicated that she was in fact more than capable of this time. 

The time appears all the more impressive when you learn that it placed her 4461st in the race, well up the rankings in her FV50 caetgory and comfortably inside the top 50% of finishers, which would have contained many, many runners 20 or 30 years her junior! There were just over 3,000 women running and the Harriers runner sneaked into the top 1,000, and the top third of finishers with 986th place.

Well done Joan! We are all thrilled for you! This backs up the results of Dawn and Lisa very nicely and now, as London dawns, we are just waiting for the Harriers men to put in an appearance and make a contribution to the string of marathon successes!

Joan proudly shows off her hard earned medal after the race