Cirencester Athletics & Triathlon Club

CIRENCESTER AC's runners focused on Cheltenham's Pittville Park last Saturday for the latest round of the Gloucestershire Cross Country League.

Some of the best performances came from the club's juniors with Henry Sheffield finishing third in the Under-11s and Sophie Izon seventh in the U13s. Both are now in the top three overall in the league. Also competing were Henry's older brother Archie, 11th in the U13s and Millie Chudley, 49th in the U11s.

Newly-elected club team captain James Thomas ran a competitive race to hold a top-20 place throughout the undulating three-lap senior men's race to finish 16th out of 190.

Not far behind were former team captains Bill Leggate in 24th and Simon Campbell (43rd). The only other Cirencester runner was Dorian Matts who finished 171st.

A trio of senior ladies were led home by club captain Liz Thomas who held a midfield position to finish 67th followed by Pam Wheeler (119th), and Louise Abbott (126th).

Earlier in the day, Pittville Park hosted one of the popular weekly 5km parkruns in which Robin Lloyd returned to racing to finish in 32.43.

Elsewhere, Dave Bell continued his training for the Manchester Marathon in April by racing over 20 miles at Bramley. Despite not having a group of runners around him to pull him to a faster time he was satisfied to finish eighth in 1:54.24.

Karen Higuera also chose this high quality race, finishing just outside her three-hour target in 596th out of the 856 finishers.

Two people taking on the full marathon distance were Martin Croucher and Dave Moss who travelled to Seville in Spain where they ran together to finish in the top half of the field in 3:41.

There was more success for the club at Castle Combe where Steve Yates and Ian Barrett won their age categories, finishing in 48.02 and 48.03 for seventh and eighth overall in the two-mile run/10-mile cycle and two-mile run duathlon.

Also competing at the Wiltshire race circuit were Stuart Fitzgerald (22nd – 39.02), Tim Ingham (109th – 47.53)and Amanda Hart (279th – 58.52) in the two-lap 10km race.

There were also parkruns at Chippenham where Ollie Campbell finished sixth and Swindon where Isaac McAdam put on another top class performance to be first junior and third overall in 17.53.

He was closely followed, seven seconds behind, by Steve Yates who won the MV45 age category.

Not to be outdone, Barbara Thomas was first FV60 in 26.29 and completing the Cirencester runners was Nina Fitzgerald, finishing in 36.57.