Barrier broken Bampton goes under 25 minutes for third
CHELTENHAM Harrier Alex Bampton produced his best ever road race performance with an excellent 24:43 for a fine third place at the Wolverton 5 mile road race in Milton Keynes.
After a fast start, a pack of six runners established themselves and remained together until the third mile where Irish internationals Matt Bergin (Bedford) and Kevin Seaward (Cardiff ) upped the pace and split the group.
After finding himself back in fifth place the Cheltenham runner then picked off Josh Lunn (Bedford) and Danny Hallam (Wreake & Soar Valley) to smash the 25 minute barrier for the first time as Bergin (24:27) and Seaward (24:31) filled the top two spots.
Also on the roads, Rhys Park showed good form at the Dana Point 10k in California where he placed seventh with a time of 30:29.
Closer to home, Alice Taylor enjoyed a win as she finished as first lady home at the 6 mile multi-terrain Howling Bull run from the Herefordshire village of Walford.
Club members again made good use of various parkrun events over the weekend with Chris Booth (17:03) claiming his first Cheltenham parkrun first place, Dave Aubrey (18:08), Simon Critchley (18:27) and George Hawthorne (18:37) made the top five whilst Matt Evans (20:27), James Wilkinson (20:37) and Mike Ede (20:59) also enjoyed a run out.
At what must be one of the country’s toughest parkruns, Gareth Edwards (20:41) was first across the line at the Mount Edgcumbe event in Cornwall, whilst there were also first places for Liam Roarty (17:19) at the Malahide event in Dublin and for Dave Tomlin (18:27) in Newent.
Kaitlyn Sheppard (20:27) finished as the leading lady in Tewkesbury in seventh place overall, a feat matched by new club member Caroline Cotterell (21:07) in Barnstaple where Nick Holliday (20:06) was fourth man home.
Steve Bradley (19:19) finished ninth at the Kingsway event in Gloucester whilst Andy Prophett (19:19) finished 12th at the wonderfully titled The Wammy parkrun in Newcastle-underlyme.