Colchester Harriers’ athletes enjoyed a golden evening at the Pleshey 5 – which this year doubled as the Essex 5 Mile Championships. Harriers’ women’s team again led the way winning the team gold medal with three runners closely packed in the top four positions as Tracy English ran a Personal Best (PB) of 30:58 to claim individual silver, Victoria Primmer clocked 31:05 (PB) to take bronze and Heidi Hogan-Steele just behind in fourth with 31:10. English’s time was the ninth fastest over the distance in in her age group in the UK this year. The leading trio were well backed up by Emma Burgess (33:22) and Lydia Callan, who recorded a promising 34:40 on debut despite feeling unwell.

The men were led home by Dean Williamson, who ran a superb race to take the individual gold medal by a margin of over a minute – as well as smashing the course record his time of 24:21 was the fourth fastest in the UK this year, a considerable achievement on what is an undulating course. Williamson was well backed up by club colleagues Chris Sellens (28:04) and Ryan Day (28:17) as Harriers just missed out on the team podium. 

There was also individual success for Colin Ridley (28:40, MV60 Gold), Chris Stevenson (32:42 PB, MV60 Bronze) and Wesley Benton (28:32, MV40 Bronze) as well as Personal Bests over the distance for Dan Widdowson (28:46) and James Plant (32:43).

Colchester’s runners also enjoyed a successful weekend in Parkruns across the county with Adrian Mussett (16:17 at Mersea Island), John Scaife (17:30 at Great Cornard), Laura Shewbridge (20:40 at Chelmsford) and Ella Jeffries (21:25 at Marks Hall) amongst the first finishers. Images by Justine Sheekey.