Strong start for Rodillians

A very muddy Temple Newsam Ten saw Eddy Lowe as the first Rodillian home first in 1:08 with Beth Gripton the first female to finish in 1:29. Claire Telford and Jon Vaile both followed in 1:47 and Graham Holroyd 2:21 Laura Bell 2:22 completed the line-up. And an equally muddy St Aiden’s Beast Jon Vaile and Claire also posted near identical times in the 6.66 mile race with 1:16 and 1:17 respectively. Over at Bingley, Con Burdekin completed the club’s first marathon of the year in 4:26 whilst there were club age category records for 20 miles for both David McAllister 3:36 and Laura Bell 3:47.

As one of the club’s three main local races, Dewsbury 10K saw a good turnout led home as always by Eddy Lowe 37:52 closely followed by Gary Hartley 39:29 Rob Hoban 41:05 Paul Wood 42:36 Beth Gripton 45:09 David McAllister 46:29 Sophie Waite 47:32 and Ian Furness 48:53 all finishing under the 50 minute mark. Neil Hartley just beat his wife Hayley by 33 seconds as he finished in 52:08 with David Sills 54:33, Ingrid Senior 56:14 and Amanda Wright 1:00 completing the field.

The next local event saw another strong performance from Beth Gripton 1:45 with just a minute separating David McAllister 1:47, Ian Furness and Ian Budenberg at a hilly Liversedge Half Marathon followed by Claire Telford 2:00 and Jon Vaile 2:17.

And Rodillians’ “home” race saw an impressive nineteen members run led by Gary Hartley setting a club age category record of 38:22 edging out Eddy Lowe in 38:41 and Rob Hoban 41:07. Amongst the women, the top three were Beth Gripton in 45:11 followed closely by Sophie Waite in 47:20 and Claire Telford 49:49 who recorded a PB as did Ingrid Senior with 54:27.

The race also saw club founder Ron Needham continue his record of being Race Referee for Hospice 10K since its inception and the club provide race marshals for this race and the English Schools Cross Country Championships where Ron Needham was also Clerk of Course. There were welcome returns for Mike Dunkley 50:29 and Karen Scott 56:16 and club debuts in the race for James Sharples 47:24 Ian Furness 49:18 and David Sills 56:36.

Further afield, Gary Hartley posted a club age category record with 1:30 at Lincolnshire Half Marathon, Con Burdekin reached a PB of 1:35 at the Central Lancashire Half Marathon, Ingrid Senior ran London Winter 10K 1:00 and the Rivington Pike Fell race in 37:17. On the international front, at the Rome Marathon, Dan Wood set an impressive personal best of 3:29 despite a very warm day, whilst in Tokyo Matthew Stephenson joined 37,000 other runners as he completed his 5th Major Marathon finishing in 4:49.

And the club to continued to gain new members as we welcomed Paul Fixter and Grenville Wade and completed parkruns across the UK and as far as Poland, Germany and the Netherlands with Louise Thompson reaching a remarkable milestone 400th parkrun. "