Teenage kicks all through the night.
We have just heard that John Walsh (Dave's elder brother and former member of Les Croupiers) died yesterday (29 September) after collapsing following a training run. He was 60. We have no further details at the moment.
Jeff Aston
You would expect the local club to furnish most of the quality runners in a city marathon, but even so first male over 40* (Dave Headon), first over 50 (Sandy Johnston), first female (Sarah McLouglin), and first female over 40 (Veronica Singleton) is not a bad flush. Outside those who won anything, Dave Coles — who is not 45 — continued his progress up the club rankings (and he ran a 10k PB the following week in the KRUF). However, we measure perfromances against previous bests, and by this criterion Matthew Davey's 3:09 and Tracey Newman's 4:50 rank as the best we produced.
*Pedants might note that Dave H was not first over 40, as Howard Parsell, who was third, is also a vet.
While the marathon went well for us, it was not so popular with motorists. Don't be altogether surprised if this was the last one for a while.
The Anglo-Celtic Plate 100k (and yes, the winner got a plate) was on the same day, and the turnout wasn't quite as high. Andy Cleves ran a massive personal best, and came first Welshman. He ran a very impressive even race, gradually moving through the field and picking off more impatient starters. Sadly for me, this included my own personal hero Sam Moore, who was enjoying his usual fag when I cycled past him on the way to the start, and fairly flew the opening 20 miles of the race but had to drop out. We'll never persuade Andy to concentrate on 5 and 10ks now.
John attacks the final hill. (Photo: Mark Fraser.)
John Cox marked the end of his period of self-imposed exile with a convincing win in the Roman Run. Our sympathies go out to Darran Hiscox who threw away a three minute lead when he took a wrong turn.
The KRUF 10k (and I don't have a copy of results yet — so don't even ask) went even better for some. Ceri Donovan proved that she is back to fitness, finding she had kept enough in reserve for a killer lap of the track, and Richie Bullen threatened the club vet 10k record (31:38) with an impressively steady performance, which might have been even faster if he hadn't dropped Julian Baker by 6k.
Richie crossed the line ahead of Julian (32:07 to 32:10) the following week, in the National 10k in Moreton-in-Marsh, though he rather modestly said that he'd have been happier with a defeat and a sub-32 clocking.
Julian mananged a sort of revenge by reversing their positions in Swansea. Mick McGeoch, our man on the spot reports:
Felix Limo ran 27:39 to demolish the three-year old course record (28:02) and win a £25000 Saab 9-3 Convertible. Conditions, as any of the runners will tell you, were not ideal, most people being 30–40 seconds slower than at Cardiff due to the stiff breeze on the homeward run.
Men:1. Felix Limo 27:39; 2. Albert Chepkirui 27:50; 3. Daniel Komen 28:58 (all Kenya). Ben Noad (Bristol) first Brit in 6th 29:40.
Ladies: 1. Miriam Wangari (Kenya) 33:36; 2. Amanda Wright-Allen (Eng) 33:46; 3. Andrea Green (Eng) 33:58.
What would Paula Radcliffe have managed if she'd come to Wales?
I've moved the pace calculator (now deleted), and changed it so the start time can be adjusted for any marathon, not just London. I had originally allowed for some extra time at the start to adjust for the time it takes to cross the line in big races, but this seemed very arbitrary to me when I looked at it again. I will try to rewrite it soon so it works backwards from a target time, and may add mile or five k split times, depending on reaction, if any.
I've also updated the web server statistics for this site. As I've finally worked out how to analyze several logs, the next time I update this will be cover a longer period, giving, I hope, a better indication of site usage. As if anyone else cares.
Last updated 19 August 2007
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