Fabulous Fairford

Tewkesbury’s Club Championship visited Fairford for their annual 10k road race. In glorious sunny weather, the village event joined the ‘Fairford Festival’ to set the stage for a testing hot and undulating race, and to follow, a club picnic hosted by the Crombie-Hicks.

True to form, James Head set the pace for TRC amongst the 400 good standard runners.

Most of them had their heads turned as they exited the village and crossed the magnificent River Coln – it’s a stunning Cotswold view which epitomises the village.

James went on to run a decent time on such a rolling course but as the quality at the sharp end was high, he had to settle for 16th place and 5th V40!

Up and coming TRC runner Simon Meadows also displayed his best form as he stayed close to James.

In the women’s race, Shona Crombie-Hicks was runner-up behind the swift Gemma Hargreaves.

However, the birthday girl celebrated by getting a 20 meter lead on Jon Mansfield within the first kilometre and strongly held it until the finish line to break the 40 minute mark, which also breaks the club record by 4 seconds – we can expect that to reduce further in July. Shona couldn’t contain her joy after such a commanding performance over Jon. In Jon’s defence, it was an injury-test run after weeks out with a stress fracture.

Mark Gardiner set a good pace over the first couple of miles and looked to have the better of Jon as well. Only for Mark to slightly drop pace enough to draw Jon back. Mark’s 40:26 minutes is a strong time.

The biggest surprize for Tewkesbury was Alec Vincent’s performance; Alec surprized himself with a 10km PB! By no stretch of the imagination, his run was worthy of a ‘Performance of the Year’ nomination.

Considering the course profile, many experts would credit at least a minute and the heat in the later sections would have been a disadvantage. Alec’s form coming out of spring is excellent.

With Edinburgh Marathon completed (see web news), Annabel Roberts was feeling nervous about running such a shorter distance.

Her second race for Tewkesbury was as good as expected with a healthy 42:34 minutes and the bonus of collecting the 1st FV35 prize. She was 8th female overall.

Mike Bryce is determined to complete more events than last year after overcoming several injury concerns and DNSs.

He ran Fairford strongly in 44:23 minutes. Paul Mason followed a couple of minutes behind as he too is making more start lines.

Happy to be inside the top 100, Chris Duckworth ran 47:29 – Chris would have preferred cooler conditions.

Paul Booth worked well to finish under 50 minutes and would have enjoyed the last couple of miles which descended back to the village.

Elaine Vincent completed the competitive women’s team of 3 to score. Elaine ran hard and left nothing behind as she blazed past the tomb of John Tame in Fairford church.

The next three TRC finished within 10 minutes of each other with Jude Rodrigues leading Tracy Tailford. Vicki Earls ran easy with focus on her Hereford 5km race on the following Wednesday.

Karen Mason finished 380th with 70 minutes while Mike Ward finished 4th V70 although he is in his 80’s. Mike ran well and leads the way in the 80+ category.