Willgoss goes so close to two-hour mark
CLC Striders members took on the Fission 20-mile and half marathon races in Berkeley as four competed in the 20-mile distance, winning the second team prize in a big and competitive field on the day.
Joe Willgoss finished first for the club with a top-10 placing, just outside the two-hour mark, in 2:00.11, followed home by Rob Barnett in a time of 2:04.37 – two minutes faster than his time in the event last year.
Club captain Will Pearce clocked 2:14.34 and Richard Aarons, racing this distance for the first time, finished in a solid 2:16.21, while the only Strider in the half marathon, Paul Northup, went sub-90 minutes with a time of 1:29:15 and was the second V50 finisher.
The club’s hill and trail runners competed in the annual Cleevewold race hosted by Cheltenham Harriers, where Helen Knight was first lady finisher and Fiona Brady-miller was third.
Alex Doherty, Tom Fletcher and Gavin Jerman also ran races for the club – and the mixed team of Knight, Doherty and Fletcher won the first team prize.
Rich Elsworthy and Jon and Helen Howes took to the forest trails for the Forest of Dean Spring Half Marathon where Elsworthy clocked a fast 1:21:58, Jon continued his strong comeback in 1:27:56 for third in his MV45 category, and Helen ran 1:57:51.
The club’s ultra specialists were putting themselves to the test with Rob Bircher in the Fallout Ultra in Oxfordshire and Ollie Watkins in the Ultra Trail Chianti Castles event in Italy.
Watkins battled through to the end of the 100k course in around 14 hours 30 minutes. Bircher, kitted out in a full hazmat suit, had to make his way as far away from the site of an imagined nuclear event (at Harwell, Oxfordshire) and get outside of a 40-mile imaginary exclusion zone as soon as he could, and managed 46 miles, ending up somewhere near Banbury.