Men's distance round-up: March 18th

A number of our senior men were in action in a variety of events over the weekend, with conditions generally being wet and windy.

Matt Gunby solo'd his way to a 4 minute victory in the Mike Penman 10K in Victoria Park, Hackney, clocking a useful 30.37.

Harold Wyber, running 2nd claim for Orion Harriers in their mob match versus South London Harriers, ended Stuart Major's incredible run of 39 consecutive mob match victories for SLH. Wyber's winning margin was 22". Wyber then headed north to compete in the Wolf's Peak fell race, a 5.71 mile, c.1,500ft climb race near Hope in the Derwent Valley, where he placed 2nd despite a rather comfortable start.

At the Reading Half Marathon, Tom Beedell clocked 71.56 for 50th place, and Paralympian partially-sighted athlete Tim Prendergast was 121st in 78.02 as he builds towards his debut marathon in London. There were 12,863 finishers here.

At the Fleet Half Marathon, Simon James made his first appearance in a Woodford vest - or, indeed, a club vest of any colour - and recorded an impressive 74.01 to finish 8th out of 2,267 finishers. Simon is also training for the London.

Joe Everitt continues to make good progress. His time of 80.45 for 20th out of 1,723 finishers was over 4 minutes up on his October PB and over 10 minutes faster than in the same race last year.

In the Finchley 20, M40 Matt Molloy clocked 2hrs 6mins 17 secs to finish 31st  of 502 finishers, while Dave Cox, 60 years old this summer, ran an impressive 2hrs 7mins 14 secs.

We also took some athletes to the Essex Road Relays, mostly looking for experience in relay running the week before the South of England 12 Stage. A team of Rob Wilbraham (22.05), Gavin Lewis (20.14), Tony Russell (20.57) and CJ Shepherd (21.19) finished 9th. While new recruit Daniel Mann (21.05) and Tim Ballard (21.02) ran in a non-scoring team. 

19 year old Ed Shepherd has been selected to represent England U20s in the Home Countries International XC in Wales next Saturday.