April got underway with sunshine in the UK but our intrepid Super Half team running abroad in both Prague (Geoff Hurrell and Nicola Morris) and Berlin (Stewart McIlwham).
Enjoying the local sunshine were the Purse family (+ Gem Stilliard) at the Kent Coastal HM and 10k with Brenda Purse and Gem picking up age category first places.
We also had Chris Hulm being denied a HM PB at the London Landmarks due to a route detour due to a medical emergency.
Down on the South Coast before the Brighton Marathon, Margaret Deighton became the first ever racing harrier F70, picking up AG third place in the 10k, where there was also an excellent PB from Martin Sands.
The marathon saw a harrier turnout of 11 men (and no women) with Grant Aitken being quickest harrier home, just outside 3 hours.
The track season then got underway, with club records for Andy Joad at Highgate, followed by Eren Muduroglu doing great times with an 800/1500m double at Bromley on his track debut.
The latest Kent Grand Prix Half Marathon in Ashford saw a disappointingly small turnout of just 9 harriers (+2 in the marathon) but a few age group podiums were still achieved.
Sam Joad took a top ten place in a Mountain race in Indonesia and we also had racers in Wales and France flying the harriers flag from 10k to the marathon.
The Easter weekend saw a small group of Harriers go well at the Folkestone 10, four great performances from BQs Mark Mellor, Greg Falconer, Gareth Hiron and Colin Ricketts at the Boston Marathon, before a record fest at the Tonbridge Easter Open Track Meeting, with 8 club records from Matt Newman, Vicky Eames, Steve Austin, Maria Gandara and Paul Ketterer.
April was closed out with Harriers running London, Manchester and Stratford-upon-Avon marathons on an unseasonably warm weekend.
Dillon Hobbs just missed out on his own club record, Amelie Karlsson moved up to 4th all time Harrier women and Steve Austin ran a new M65 record in London plus Keith Mitchell became the 53rd sub 3 hour Harrier in Manchester.
Congratulations to everyone who ran, ran a PB or completed their own personal goal.
16 more harriers made their racing debut in April and hopefully many more will don their deckchair in the summer months.
The race for the Mike Thurgood Trophy is hotting up with Amelie Karlsson and Tara Taylor in joint top spot (340 points) and Geoff Turner (300) and Colin Ricketts (290) just behind.
Please don’t forget to let me know if you run a race for the Harriers, so we can keep our race archive up to date – a quick email is all it takes.
Cheers
Andrew D
Co Club Statistician