Forest of Dean

Some quite exciting news has emerged from the Forest of Dean regarding some Tewkesbury runners.

Firstly, relatively new member and new runner Simon Crilley shined brightly during a sunny 10 km trail race from The Speech House. As part of the rearranged Gloucester marathon, runners enjoyed a range of distance races and Simon, surprisingly, found himself pushing for a podium place. Formerly a dedicated footballer and now a dedicated cyclist, the bearded athlete completed the course in 45:13 minutes to claim 4th place from a quality field of nearly 200 runners.

In the Half Marathon Shona Crombie-Hicks ran 1:31 hr for 5th overall and 1st woman with a gap of 8 minutes over the runner-up! 286 runners completed the Half and it’s understood that Shona combined the race into her long training run on what turned-out to be one of the hottest days of the summer.

If those two blistering performances wasn’t enough to put the Wild Boar on their trotters, then the Marathon event had two more shiners; there was Julie Symonds recording another good marathon effort on her CV. Julie completed the course in 4:32 hrs which sounds tremendous for a forest trail. Her placing was 138th.

Though the biggest surprise, and one of the club performances to date, was David Aguirre. Dave took on his first marathon with no planning and no preparation after an entry was being offered over a BBQ a few days before. He could have picked an ‘easier’ debut marathon as this one included a substantial 2.5 mile climb on each lap. Dave’s time of 5:09 hrs is what many dream about on a debut marathon so it’s safe to say Dave would have slept like a log that night.