A new British record.

Loughborough Indoor Open

Report – David Jones

And so it begins.

A handful of our junior T&F athletes made the journey to Loughborough last weekend in preparation for this coming weekend’s Midlands Championships.

Added to these juniors were Mark Illingworth and Paula Williams from our Vets. Mark made his inaugural 60m indoor debut, finishing with a best time of 9.16. Okay it’s early days but this puts him top of the UK rankings in his age category. Mark assures me has taken a screenshot to preserve for posterity. His somewhat self deprecating comments on his debut were “ the race was awful. First time out of blocks and I messed it up. I effectively stood up when the gun went, did the Hokey Cokey with my right foot and then started running. By then I was a few metres down.

Luckily for ranking purposes I was beaten by two M70’s.

Top speed was okay so I must get my start sorted out. Sprinting is quite a technical event!”

As the item at the top of the newsletter states, Paula started the year in much the same form as she showed in 2023 by breaking the British indoor record for the shot put with a PB throw of 13.56, 

Paula also ran 8.50 in the 60m and 9.81 in 60m hurdles.

U17 Sam McKenzie recorded a time of 7.77 in the 60m, with Freddie Clemons running a best time of 8.81 in the 60m hurdles and Ethan Winning ran 9.26 in the same event.

Ruby Edwards was competing in both long jump and triple jump. Her long jump competition was over in 20 minutes. Unfortunately she recorded 4 no jumps, just millimetres over, one of which was measured at 4.98 metres which would have been a PB. Very cruel. She recorded a best jump on the day of 4.59m. Her triple jump was a similar story with a best jump of 10.19. Both events were good practice for this weekend’s Midland Championships.

Ladies XC report

Warley Woods

Report – Vicky Sharpe

The sun came out to shine on the Stratford ladies at Warley Woods for potentially their 2nd time this season if they also ran at counties last month.

The 6.2km (3.8mi) course consisted of 1 small loop, staying inside the bowl which makes up the main park and 2 big loops taking in more hills and some muddier woodland – what more could you want from a XC course?!

Some of the local universities, who are in the league, used the event as a qualifier for BUCS XC which meant that there was a very strong field of 202 runners giving it their all.

Stratford ladies rose to the challenge and finished 11th team (out of 18) overall and 11th (out of 13) in the masters race. 

First home for Stratford in her first race this season was Gerogie Campbell (24:27) who was able to keep in stride with fellow Birmingham Uni team mates, finishing 16th overall and 9th senior women.

The next 3 in quick succession were Jess Sheppard (26:27) Olivia Robinson (26:44)  and Emma Bexson (27:22), all achieving top 30 in their respective junior/senior/master categories.

Imogen Sheppard (28:57) kept her promise to race at least one race per year despite her track focus. She finished 50th senior.

Suzie Ross (29:38), Emma Vickers (30:32) and Bronwen Mansel (31:07) continued their consistently strong performances, particularly showing their strength in the final lap making gains and over-taking the competition.

Finding the energy to smile all the way around were Sarah Gillard (32:00) and Kate Barney (32:05) who clearly enjoyed the fun course and sunshine.

Next, in her first year of the junior season was Onna Dowling (32:51), quickly followed by some familiar XC faces Suzi Graham (33:00) and Pip Bell (33:24).

Grabbing the opportunity to compete instead of cheering on her fantastic children was Hannah Osbourne (34:09). Completing the 18 ladies team was Sam Swanepoel (37:46), Kath Pester (38:34), Philippa Paddock (39:49) and Sue Mothersaw (41:30) who were greeted home by the patent pending Stratford Wave (think mexican wave but yellow and black).

A final shout out to all the people who came to join the Stratford Ladies support crew, I believe we totalled 11 people and 4 dogs – maybe some SAC dog shirts are needed!

Men’s XC report.

Bromsgrove

Report – Malcolm Bowyer.

It was a sunny winter’s day for Stratford’s men at their third cross country race taking place at Bromsgrove.

The course was 3 laps which was won by Alex Adams (Bromsgrove and Redditch) in a time of 32,40.

It was fairly flat but very boggy under foot, making it hard going.

There were over 200 runners competing.  

Stratford had an excellent turnout with a strong team of 20.

First for Stratford was Alex Pester,19th, in a time of 35:37, who battled it out with Ned Campbell 31st, in a time of 36:10.

Hot on his spikes was Taylor Stubbins, 41st, sprinting over the line in 36:55.

The next three runners ran together for the three lap course until Sam Wilks 47th (37.07) just pulled ahead towards the end. The ever reliable Matt Burdus Cook was 61st,(37:40) and then Tom Cox 67th (37:54)

This was a great result for the A team runners.

The next six Stratford runners who make up the B team were Richard Liggatt 70th (38:11) followed closely for the whole race by David Teasdale 83rd (38:20), Drew Sambridge 93rd was working hard to finish in 39:58.

Never missing a cross country race is Tim Hutchinson 100th (40:22) and always smiling Rob Gisbourne 118th (41:07). Hue Crosweller 126th (41:43) made up a strong B team.

The next eight Stratford runners worked there spikes off to back up the A and B teams with Steve Batsford 127th (41:46 ). Not far behind was Stuart George 133rd (43: 18). Making a welcome comeback was Graham Black 145th (44.12). Ever improved Damian Wheeler 149th (44.29) was followed by David Battersby 154th (44,50) and Chris Beck 162th (45,39), Michael Sheppard  169th (46,17) who all ran a great race. Then Paul Baird 198th (58,19) who is one of our senior runners showing that age is just a number and it’s never too late to compete for his club.

The mens A team came 5th out of 13th teams and the B team is currently 2nd out of 6 teams.

We are now in 4th place overall with one more race left in the season.

C25k Winter 2023-2024 Report

 Report – Robin Langhorn.

The end of October 2023 saw the start of our most recent Couch-2-5k programme and with some savvy Facebook exposure and word of mouth marketing, we managed to get a rather impressive 32 people sign up!

Based on some runner’s community research and previous club C25k feedback, Sarah Bland and I decided to extend the typical NHS 9-week course out to 12 weeks. The hope was that the intervals would be more manageable, enabling more people to complete the whole course and ultimately allow them to confidently continue running afterwards.

After a first few nervous encounters both from my side (this was my first foray into leading a group) and theirs, the group quickly settled into a good rhythm.

As the course progressed, the sessions got longer, the weather worsened (rain, ice, wind, floods!) but the enthusiasm to turn up week in, week out and put in the effort was never dampened and the group spirit and camaraderie really started to form.

In fact, as the chat on the WhatsApp group picked up the pace, so did they! Plus, as I was keen to point out, if they could complete this course with the awful weather and training through the Christmas break, then running for the rest of 2024 and beyond would be a breeze in comparison!

The final day of the plan was to graduate the C25k by completing the Stratford ParkRun.

Saturday 13^th January met us with a cold, crisp air and surprisingly firm soil underfoot; it was perfect running weather and to think that the week before the Rec was more use as a swimming pool. It was remarkable that we managed to get our run in at all!

On the day our group consisted of 15 intrepid (and perhaps slightly nervous) runners as well as a team of SAC pacers. We set off amongst the throng of 368 others to put the last 12 weeks of persistence, dedication and enthusiasm into practice.

Lap 1 was very busy, with a lot of the group jostling to get comfy and find some space. As lap 2 approached, everyone was hitting their stride and the sun came out to warm things up nicely. The extra effort everyone was putting in combined with the warmth from the sun meant the C25k group were very quickly jettisoning many hats, gloves, jackets and fleeces to prevent over-heating.

And so to Lap 3, the final stretch of the C25k course. Everyone put in a great effort for the final lap with some rather impressive sprint finishes up through the carpark and into the funnel.

The whole group, including the SAC pacers and supporters were fantastic, cheering every runner home. So much so that we had numerous enquiries from other Parkrunners about what was going on and how people could get involved.

Medals awarded and with the obligatory team photo snapped, just like that, the C25k course was complete.

All that was left was a short wander into town to Prospero Lounge for a well-deserved celebratory brunch. (Huge thanks to the team there for accommodating 19 of us on a Saturday morning when they don’t usually take bookings.)

I’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who helped make this course happen. It’s been a huge success and at the time of writing, we had 12 C25k graduates join us for the very next (freezing) Monday night track session and six have already joined the club as members, with hopefully more to come.

So if you see some new faces around, please do make them feel welcome and encourage them as they embark on their SAC running journey.