Harriers bag a sneaky swift half

BURNHAM-ON-SEA HALF MARATHON

Four Exmouth Harriers travelled a little way east on Sunday (6th October) to the deepest, darkest depths of the Somerset Levels. Running a half-marathon in a an area with the word ‘level’ in the title provides hope in itself that it may be a flat, fast PB friendly course, and the Burnham-On-Sea offers just that.

Hoping to bag a few extra percent for his club championship campaign before he hops on a plane and flies south to the Antarctic again, was Hugh Marsden. After an uncharacteristic shaky start to the year which, unusually, saw Hugh struggling with a few injuries, his summer and autumn season has gathered pace and seen him produce the times and performances that we are often wont to take for granted where this super-vet toughie is concerned. At this competitive event, Hugh was 14^th overall in field of around 200. In what was described as “ideal running conditions”, Hugh’s time was 84:08 and he was 3^rd in a talented MV50 field.

Hugh’s partner, Dawn Teed, has been celebrating her first year in the FV50 category with a string of good performances and category wins, which, after age adjustment, are on a par with any she has ever come up with. If you struggled to find Dawn in the race results, it’s because she in fact appears as ‘David Teed’, a male vet 50 runner. However, it only takes a swift glance up the results to see that Dawn was in fact the first vet 50 woman, but, unfortunately, prizes were only awarded in 10 year age brackets, so Dawn just missed out on top spot to an FV45 athlete. Her time of 1:46:54, for 103^rd place, will, nevertheless, gain her some valuable percentage points for her club championship portfolio.

Adrian Kearns prefers quality over quantity when it comes to races and we don’t see his name appearing in race results on a regular basis, but he certainly likes quantity in the distances he opts for. He covered the 21Km distance here in a time of 91:09 and was 32^nd.

Julie Gellender, recently returned to the area and the Harriers, is eager to add her quality to an increasingly trophy-laden women’s squad at the club. In her second race appearance in the Harriers vest since arriving back from Germany, she placed 84^th overall in a time of 99:40. She was very unfortunate to just miss out on a top 3 position in the Women Aged 35-44 group, a 10 year span which she is right at the top of. With some structured training with the club now that she is back, Julie can expect to see her times steadily fall in 2014.  

CARDIFF HALF MARATHON

 Burnham wasn’t the only half-marathon event happening on 6^th October as, less than 20 miles away as the crow flies, across the Bristol Channel, Harriers’ member Lisa Broad chopped a massive 14 minutes from her Half Marathon PB. In an event which claims to be a fast, PB friendly course, Lisa took full advantage of the ideal conditions, and of her current vein of form, to run 13.1 miles in 1:48:53 in the Cardiff Half Marathon. Starting with more than 14,000 others in the field, she finished with more than 10,000 of them behind her and was in the top 500 (491^st) of around 6,000 women. Well done Lisa: top effort!