Stragglers Eager At Elmbridge
Posted by on 25 July 2017
The Stragglers turned up ‘en-masse’ at Walton-on-Thames on Sunday 23rd July for the 8th race of the Straggler road series and to keep our flag flying high in the Surrey League. If that wasn’t enough the event also concluded the Stragglers 10K series for the summer and the morning didn’t disappoint with over 40 Stragglers dominating the start line
For the ladies, Sarah Winter, making her first appearance in the road series romped home in 39:02 to be first lady Straggler and in the process recording the fastest 10K time for the Stragglers ladies in the series. Sarah was followed home by Sue Hall in 42:35 keeping up her fine form in the F45 category and finishing second F45 overall in the race with Juliet Cleghorn 43:21 third Straggler lady making up a fine quality front line.
The race conditions were equally conducive for the men. A mere 21 seconds separated the top 3 with Rob Wilcox coming out on top 35:45 and recording the fastest time in the Stragglers 10K series this year. Matt Coakes following a 31 mile ultra the previous weekend, ran an impressive time of 35:59 also recording the best 10K in the M40 category in the summer’s 10k rankings. The top 3 were completed by Jonathan Ormerod in 36:06, making for a very competitive Surrey League team performance.
The M50’s were led home by Dean Morley in 38:37, but arguably the performance of the day in that category was by Laurence Duffy whose time of 38:56 got him an age grading of 81.71%, the best recorded in the 10K series this year. Not to be outdone the M60s decided to put on a show of their own. David Brewin in 43:23 and Phil Davies in 44:07 were the M60 race winner and runner up respectively, a great achievement in a quality field.
Further down the field there were some very good performances for both the ladies and men in trying to beat their own previously recorded 10K times and rack up points in the road champs in particular for the ladies the ever-present Sabine Duffy and Helen Davies keeping up their 100% attendance record and for the men Stephen Penpraze and Carl Pretorius both recording their 7th race of the road series.
The team then gravitated back to the flag for a warm down led by Andrew Ronksley or as he insists on calling it, the stretch off!
Full Results Here
Link to Photos Here
