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Yesterday I took part in the Chester Marathon. I had qualified at the London Marathon to run in an England Masters vest, and couldn’t resist the opportunity, and another cycle of marathon training! England Athletics take over a suite at the Racecourse so you can have a place to get changed, leave your bags and return to later on. And the toilet queue was no worse than the Brewers on OR chip night! It felt a bit special, especially when it started to drizzle on those outside

Well done to all OR members who represented the club at both XC events over the weekend, some great results as always! An extra well done to Chris and Matthew for running in both events!  Saturday was the Chiltern League race at Cassiobury Park, Watford, a nice venue and surprisingly quick and easy to get to! Special mention to Matthew Dicks who finished top 5 and 1st MK Marshall home! Results aren’t out yet but some great efforts from our small team should see us maintain mid table in division. Sunday saw the 3 Counties event at Stopsley and although a smaller turnout than normal, some more great running from team OR sees us stay mid table. Special mention to Matthew and Katie finishing second male and female respectively. Final rounds are Sunday 4th Feb at Dunstable for the 3 Counties and Sat 10th Feb at Oxford for the Chiltern, let’s see if we can finish both competitions with a great showing from OR!

A new season and a new venue, with WDAC moving from the typical Croyland Park venue, to Irchester Country Park. Admittedly, a slight eyebrow was raised to the location, which has a lot of tarmac and hard core paths, but actually there were some very nice twists and muddy hilly sections to add in a little more challenge to the park run venue. Pleasingly ORs came out in force with a record number of 29 runners turning up for a lovely sunny morning. This alone should be celebrated as a great feat, perhaps the most important, but also the men's team produced an outstanding performance to hit a record high 4th place with not only all of the men's top 8 (8 runners count for points) finishing inside the top 80 with more still inside the top 100 showing the strength in depth of the men's team that turned out. There were some great individual performances to note, with the return of Matt Dicks executing a masterful performance to secure the outright win, John Risby and Terry O'Cleirigh getting 2nd in age cat despite missing out on scoring for the team, and a great debut from Tom Baggott finishing 38th. And whilst not everyone scored for the team, those great performances still go a long way to playing 'defence' in the words of the great David O'Connor as they push scoring runners in rival teams further down the leader board. It was a big turn out all round for the first race with nearly 500 runners across all clubs, and it was a strong showing on the ladies side with over 200 runners. This did hurt our fortunes, with most of our turnout on the men's side, the ladies', normally our team's backbone, had an unlucky day. We move on to the next race at Delapre on November 26th! 4 weeks to prep... be there! Full results can be found at: http://www.threecountiesxc.co.uk/3CXC_Fixtures.html

Ultra madness!

Well done to the two OR members who took part in Friday's rather warm Beds AAA 10k. Anthony O Neil smashed his target with a time of 43.29 minutes, super speedy and a PB to boot! Katie Godof also achieved a fantastic time of 39.09 to be awarded first lady! Amazing stuff!

Shout Out #1: Jo-Anne Rouse was nominated because of 'Friendship'. "I am incredibly thankful to Jo for encouraging me to join Olney Runners and become part of this amazing community!

After the Colworth Challenge (the Sunday half was simply survival in the hot conditions), last night’s Corby 5 (East Midlands Grand Prix race 6) was always going to be a hard one for me.

More free ice creams, lollies and iced teas were consumed on the comfy garden chairs at the finish and the chat turned from relief at it being over and comparing countryside related rashes to how we will survive Sunday’s finale...