On a lovely day at the Coast, Chris Davies racing a flat 10miler continued his massive improvement.

Full Results HERE

In just his second ever 10mile Road Race he destroyed his PB of 62.13 at the St Anne’s Race in March this year and ran 57.53 at the Blackpool – Fleetwood Race, finishing 5th of 2013 runners. This is great reward for commitment and hard work.

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Burnley Firestation 10k – October 6th 2013

This popular annual 10k Road race attracted 234 runners and amongst them were Harriers Shaun Livesey, Michael Toms, Evan Cook and Louise McCauley as well as Laura Hesketh who competes for Blackburn Harriers on the Track.

Full Results HERE

Shaun ran really well to finish 2nd overall (35.51) on this tough course. New member Michael (V45) had another good run finishing in 8th place in a time of 38.30. Evan (V60) continued on his winning ways of late with yet another victory in the age category placing 15th overall (40.17). Louise took 89th place and ran a PB of 47.02 and no doubt on easier courses, this time is going to come down substantially. Laura, running for Clayton finished 60th (44.51).

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Chester Marathon – Sunday October 6th 2013

Ben Fish had targeted the Berlin Marathon held the other weekend in an attempt to gain the qualifying time for the Commonwealth Games Marathon in Glasgow 2014. Sadly, Ben came down with ill-health right on the eve of the Race and had to withdraw. Never short on determination, he decided to throw caution to the wind and entered the Chester Marathon as a back up, but it didn’t work out well in the end.

Full Results HERE

Speaking after the Race, Ben looked at the circumstances of his Race and his condition leading up to it and this is what he had to say ” Yeah, when they go wrong they really go wrong! At least now I know that it takes at least a month to be right after being ill, next time I’m in that situation I won’t race. I recover really well from races, but it doesn’t seem like I recover anywhere near as well from being ill!

In running there’s nowhere to hide and I’ll always explain and talk about any of my races, no matter how bad they are. Maybe there’s things some of the younger ones can learn.

To be honest, deep down I knew my chances of a pb were diminished after that bout of illness, I don’t take pulling out of races lightly, so missing Berlin meant that all wasn’t well. I have recovered within three weeks of being ill before, but not this time. I aimed to break the race up into 5 mile segments, aiming for 26 – 26:30 for each one. It was a shock to struggle so early, first 5 was ok in 26:15, but by 8 miles I knew the game was up. I’d not done all this training to just drop out, so I just forced myself to finish and I knew before halfway that I was going to run a shocking time of 2hr 30 or more”.

Many would like to run a ‘shocking time’ of 2hr 30, but that is a measure of the standards that Ben has come to set for himself. We asked Ben whether he would enter the London marathon next year to try and gain the qualifying time, but he was little circumspect saying that “I will have to see how the Winter goes before I start thinking about that qualifying time. If I don’t hit any snags then I still believe it’s possible”.

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