parkruns
The first Saturday of the month saw 54 runners across 12 parkruns. Whilst we didn’t have any first finishers, we had a lot of top 5 finishes with second for myself and 3rd for Niki at Maesteg with Sarah D second lady. Kieron, Aled and John B finished within 1 second of each other in 2nd to 4th at Aberfields with Claire DB third lady. Tammie and I (or Team G&T) set the bar high in the first weekend of this months team challenge with our Hawaiian fancy dress efforts. Chris Pratt and Melanie Thomas opted for Merthyr parkrun before heading to the Roman Run which I’ll come onto in the race section.
The second Saturday was all about the tourism with Johnsons Tours heading to London with 11 of our members running Bushy whilst Karl and Vickie went to the nearby Kingston parkrun. Karl became the first member of the club to run at 150 different parkrun venues. Although there’s no tshirt milestones for tourism, the next ‘5K challenge’ app total after 100 is 250 which is crazy achievement but one which I think 3 or 4 of our members will eventually achieve in a few years time. There was more fancy dress at Maesteg. Chris Stanlake notched up his 200th volunteer stint. OK the speedy side of things, Bethan Moor recorded the fastest parkrun time by any of our female members this year with a 20:55 at Cardiff.
Week 3 saw 61 parkrunners at 14 different venues. Paul Teesdale and Alison Allen were first male and female finishers at Maesteg whilst Marina Konstantinova was second female at Aberfields. John Burridge set a new club record for longest time to reach 50 parkruns as he ran his 50th parkrun almost 11 and a half years after his first – both being at Porthcawl. We had 3 members at Marecchia parkrun in Italy ahead of the 70.3 and full Ironman in that region with Martin Beard finishing 3rd overall in that parkrun and our Cowell Club duo of Sarah Davies and Dawn Hopkins notching up yet another tourism. Dai Kembery became only the third member to run 100+ parkruns at two different venues with his 100th at Maesteg.
The final weekend of the month saw 66 members at 12 different venues. There was an incredible 19:35 PB from Jonathan Matthews at Cardiff parkrun – Jonathan’s PB was over three minutes slower than this at the start of the year. Luke Davis was third at Maesteg whilst Denise Bradley was second female. Aled Hughes was first finisher at Aberfields with Sarah Davies second female. Tourism included Chris Pratt at Parke parkrun and Darija Keenor at Woolacombe Dunes.
BCRL
The final fixture of the 2024 BCRL took us to Merthyr Mawr Lane for the 5K out and back road race. Jake was first overall in a BCRL record time of 15:02. Apparently Jake didn’t realise he was so close to going sub 15 for what would have been only the second time so potentially could have done it again had he not been chatting to the guy on the lead bike – bonkers. Relatively new member Dan Richards was our second runner and 4th overall. Paul Teesdale was our third runner across the line and 7th overall which is a very similar situation to last year where Nico had come out of nowhere to join the club and achieve incredible finish times and positions in the second half of the BCRL season. Katie Plimmer ran a PB of 20:52 and was our first lady with Bethan Moor just a few seconds back in 20:56 having been our first lady in every other fixture this year. The girls had plenty of support with 6 other club members finishing with 20:45 and 20:55. Willow Hughes was our third female in 21:30. There were fantastic performances for our top 10 male and female scorers and a great turnout of 97 runners. Despite this, Bridgend made it a clean sweep of BCRL team wins this season with our club having to settle for a still impressive runners up spot this year. Worth remembering that we would often have been 4th or 5th in the first couple of BCRL seasons so have come a long way to consistently be challenging every year and two team titles under our belts. It was another incredible BCRL season for the club with a record number of runners completing all 7 events and a 165 different members running at least one of the seven events which accounts for around 75% of our membership.
Races
Our Thursday night training home of Ogmore Life Centre was the familiar starting point for the annual Beat the Black Dog 12K in support of Papyrus (a suicide prevention charity). Jay and Tyler Howells helped friend of the club Andy Caress with the event which saw 7 of our members take on the hilly course. The event is a cani-cross event so the majority of the 70 finishers were running with dogs, however, I was very pleased to discover I ended up finishing as the first non cani-cross runner and in 10th overall. Our other runners were Peter Robinson, James Marsh, Mark Worrall, Liam O’Sullivan, Paul Harris and Jay Howells.
We had 7 runners at the Roman Run. A 15 mile race with a lot of elevation following a route from Brecon to Merthyr. Jake Tasker ended up 3rd which almost certainly would have been 1st had he not took a wrong turn and ended up adding another significant incline and a couple of miles to his run! Dylan Panting was next up with Katie Plimmer only a few minutes further back as she continues her impressive form. Chris Pratt, Melanie Thomas, Julie Ransom and Shawn Cullen completed our Roman Run finishers with many using it as training for (Snowdonia) Marathon Eryri.
We had 15 runners at Swansea 10K where Nicky Bennett was our first runner back in 37:24. It was a great day for father and son duo John and Keiron Burridge with both getting PBs. There were also several other PBs for Jonathan Matthews, Liam Jones, John Batchelor and Ria Ross.
We had 7 runners at the Pumsaint Trail races which are probably one of the best value races around. Rya Cowan-Davies, Kaye Pedler, Melinda Thomas and Sian Jenkins took on the hilly 10K distance whilst Jason Griffiths, Ceri Jones and Alun Job took on the Half Marathon distance.
We had 40 runners at the CDF 10K making it one of our biggest participated events outside or BCRL and parkrun this year. Dan Richards was our first runner back in a breathtaking 34:16 with Nico just 10 seconds later. When the club started, a sub 45 time was impressive for front runners, then a few started sneaking under 40 minutes and now we have several sub 35 runners. We had finishers from 34 minutes to 90 minutes showing that our club caters for all abilities and every single one should be celebrated – after all, they all completed the same distance on the same course on the same day. We had 18 runners at the Llantwit Major 10K where Jake Tasker won by well over 3 minutes! Katie Plimmer was our first female, 5th female overall and first in her age category.
Other races in month included Caryn Hicks and Ria Ross running the inaugural Blaenavon Heritage 5 miler. Heather Morgan ran the biggest mass participation race in the UK – the Great North Run. Denise Bradley headed to Denmark to complete the Copenhagen Half Marathon in 2:06. Danny Ridley and Carl Walsh were in Ultra action again with the 31 mile RIDUM. Kris Denholm took on the Lake Vyrnwy Half Marathon. Sharon and Debbie ran the Oldbury 10 miler with that resulting in Debbie having completed the trilogy of races that the event organisers put on each year.
We also saw Coach Kev take on the Dragons Back. I’ve included his own summary of the event below
“My Dragons Back, all inclusive 6 day running holiday in numbers
Day 1…. 15hrs:37m
Day 2…..16hrs:28m
Day 3……5hrs:56m
Day 4……5hrs:26m
Day 5 …..6hrs:57m
Day 6……5hrs:52m
Total 56hrs:26m over 146miles give or take
Elevation 43,596ft
Data from my Garmin for days 1,2,4,5 &
Day 3 my watch & phone had run out of battery as someone had picked up my charging pack by mistake. So info from official results.
Days 3,4,5 & 6 were hatchling course, where I did the later part, we were checked out of camp at 8:30 but didn’t start running until 10:30am so there is a 2hr difference in my time & DB time.
All done on less than 12 hrs sleep for the week, gallons of coffee, kilos of chips & not forgetting the pint on the last day at the checkpoint”.