A double-whammy of marathon action last weekend, as the UK’s two biggest marathons were unusually held on the same date. Colchester Harriers were out in force at both the London and Manchester marathons. Temperatures can be massively variable at this time of year and unfortunately for the competitors we were at the higher end of the spectrum with temperatures in the low twenties. Not ideal when training has been completed during the gloom of winter!

Starting off at the world record breaking attended London Marathon. Possibly performance of the day was Lucy Davies who ran a brilliantly paced 2:58:23 and would have been in the small minority of athletes to run a negative split in the second half of the race. Staying with the females, Kate Creak continued her stellar vein of form by breaking the hallowed 3-hour barrier to finish in 2:58:14, after making a last-minute decision not to accompany her sister at what would have been a much slower pace. Daisy Hilson, in her marathon debut ran a very well controlled 3:32:03, with more to come, I am sure. Other female competitors were Emma Warren who dipped under the four-hour mark in 3:57:50, Muriel Lovering 4:44:37 and Emma Taylor 5:30:19.

Onto the men’s race and Gary Licence used the club ballot place to good effect to finish in 3:25:57, sensibly dialing back his original goal pace to run to the conditions. The fastest Harrier of the day was Kim Bowling clocking a rapid 2:30:38. The next Harrier across the line was the in-form Ben Whyte (2:38:43). Ben seems to have PB’d in every race over the past year and today was no exception, with him running almost perfectly symmetrical first and second half race times. The other finishers on the male side were Andrew Risk 2:39:52, Nate Filer 2:41:02, Chris Sellens 2:50:22, Ben Troughton 2:54:17, Chris Edwards 3:09:13, Cameron Humphries 3:15:35 and Chris Goad 3:28:48.

Moving up north to Manchester and although many of the runners benefitted from earlier starts than in London, temperatures were still less than ideal, especially in the later miles. At the sharp end of the men’s race were Dean Williamson and Mohammed Elbayan. Dean was with the lead group for much of the race but an untimely side stich at 30KM meant a tough last few miles for him, and an eventual 15^th place finish in 2:26:59. Mohammed was top Harrier on the day with a fantastic 9^th place finish in 2:22:32, which is a near two minute PB from his London Marathon time last year.

Chris Stevenson continues to age like a fine wine running a tremendous PB time of 3:13:48, giving him second in the V65 category. Although, there is some doubt as to whether the ‘V65’ to beat him was really in that age category. So, there is every likelihood that he will be promoted to first V65 …. Anyway, perhaps a ‘sub-3’ and an England vest could be next for Chris?  

Other Harriers in Manchester were Amy Curtis 3:15:13, Steve Mason 3:20:35, Mark Lankester 3:24:00, Fergus Crouch 3:28.53 and Chris Regan 3:45:25. A special mention to Amy who ran an excellently paced race to obliterate her PB by a whopping thirty-six minutes! A young athlete with much, much more to come in the future.