Marathon men putting Chichester on the map
In a busy time of the year for road running, Chichester’s marathon runners have been making a name for themselves around the UK.
The club now have three athletes in the UK top 100 for the first time ever at this stage of the season.
Mike Houston had already posted the club’s fastest time of the year in the Tokyo Marathon last month with a fine personal-best time of 2hr 38min 48sec.
In the past couple of weeks, two club more members have bettered his time in the UK.
First Jo Corbett set the streets of Manchester alight with third place out of more than 13,000 finishers to smash his previous best in 2.26.12, which lifts him to 17th in the UK rankings.
Corbett was in two minds whether to start having felt below par for much of the previous week. Feeling he had nothing to lose, he started at a conservative pace but soon realised he was travelling at 5min 30sec mile pace and feeling comfortable.
This tactic probably worked in his favour in the latter stages as he grew stronger as the race progressed and had more in reserve later on than his rivals.
A week later Chris Bird shone at Brighton with a 2.31.13 clocking, which puts him 50th in the UK.
It is good news for their club Chichester Runners as, with Harry Leleu, the three were members of the winning team at the Chichester 10k at Goodwood in February, which gave a good indication of their early season form.
In fact the Chichester 10k itself is proving a useful marker of athletes’ form in the south – as three of the top five from the Goodwood race now find themselves occupying places in the top eight in the current UK marathon rankings.
Andy Coley-maud, fourth at Goodwood, is UK No8 after his 2.19.33 clocking at Brighton while Goodwood runner-up Paul Navesey from Crawley had an even better run at Brighton to record 2.18.16.
Perhaps the surprise run was from Bristol & West runner Peter le Grice, who was fifth in the Chichester 10k. The west country athlete was too good for rest of the 15,000-plus field at Brighton, romping home in 2.16.23, the fastest time in the UK this year to put him No2 in the rankings behind Nick Earl of Norwich who ran sub-2.15 in Japan.
Parkrun success
Two of Chichester’s veteran athletes have been posting nationally-ranked age-graded times in parkruns in different locations.
James Baker has run at the new venue at Littlehampton for each of the past two Saturday mornings. Last Saturday Baker set a good time of exactly 16 minutes for the 5k course. This gave him a graded score of more than 86 per cent for a place high among the 150,000-plus reckoned to be in action that day at more than 600 locations in the UK.
However, Baker’s score was not the highest for the day from Chichester Runners as over-60 runner Helen Dean ran a time of 22.01 at Lakeside in Portsmouth for a score of over 90 per cent, a rare achievement and one of just 15 to better 90 per cent in the whole of the country.
At the other end of the age scale, two of Chichester’s under-20s are getting themselves noticed over 5k.
Ned Potter ran clear of the rest at the Bognor parkrun where Alice Cox-rusbridge is often first female to finish. Cox-rusbridge was also first female at the 5k Splashpoint race at Worthing in 19.30.