Olimpick success – no it’s not a typo!

After a tremendous across the board effort, the club were delighted to finish in 2nd place with 509pts behind the winners Rugby and Northampton (626pts) and just ahead of Birchfield Harriers (498). Also trailing us were BRAT (433), Coventry Godiva (325), Leamington Cycling AC (293), Solihull & Small Heath (282) and Royal Sutton Coldfield (151).

From a coaching perspective this gives the club a great sense of pride in having a group of highly committed athletes, across the age range, who performed to the absolute best of their ability and wore the yellow vest with a huge amount of pride and passion and you can’t ask for more than that

Sphinx 5

Report – David Jones

The Sphinx AC Summer 5 miler is an annual 5-mile race organised and promoted by Sphinx AC which takes part in and around Coventry’s War Memorial Park.

It has a reputation of offering a value-for-money event with free parking, excellent organisation around a stretching – largely traffic free – course.

Finishing in the shade of a tree-lined downhill path, a medal, drink and a spoilt for choice selection of free cakes await all finishers.

The term value for money certainly nails it, as someone who recently looked in to entering the London Vitality 10k but was put off by the cost of £46, for a 10k, the Sphinx 5 miler at the princely sum of £10 was extremely good value for money.

The race also gave the opportunity of those such as stalwart and long standing club member Dave Maundrell the opportunity to tick 3 boxes at once, as race, as well as being the June Shakespeare race, was also part of this year’s Warwickshire Road Race League plus one of the club’s Grand Prix fixtures. All for a tenner. What’s not to like ?

On the night, the Yellow and Black Army were out in force with over 30 members competing. If not in the 8 -80 age range it was still a pretty wide range of 15 – 80 with Marijke Tear-Verweij and John Butler at either end of that range.

It was my first Sphinx 5 for 8 years, the last time I ran it I think a certain Alex Adams was competing in the junior run. The race was pretty much as I remembered it, mainly flat with a few steady inclines and an enthusiastic  crowd.

At the time of writing the results don’t seem to be available but I do know that the in form Jamie Hall finished in a superb 2nd place out of some 500 competing. 

European Triathlon Championships 2025 
 

Report – Paul Faithfull and Camilla Cresswell.

I travelled out to sunny Pamplona Spain with fellow SuAAC member Camilla Creswell to compete in the 2025 European Middle Distance Triathlon Championships. 

This was the 3^rd year in a row for me, so I’m starting to get to the point where I am old for my age group, so expectations were low.  This was further tempered by cramp just getting off the bus at the start!

The race was unusually late starting at 1:30 in the afternoon on a gloriously sunny day, with temperatures creeping up to 26 degC.  The swim took place in the Alloz Reservoir, a far cry from the waters of Menen 2 years prior, where half the GB team had E coli poisoning.  In Alloz, the water is so clean it probably betters tap water!

In perfect conditions I would have expected a good start to the race, but never really got going and finished the swim nearly 2 mins down on previous times, having gone at a race pace which was Zone 1 for me!

 Not an ideal start but at least I felt fresh for the bike leg after the 1900m swim, and had managed to hold off cramp in the legs.

A rolling course on mainly fantastic roads through beautiful countryside, what more could we ask for ?  Apart from a slight dilemma en route where I had to decide if it was ok to overtake an ambulance (on balance I decided that I would follow the crowd and go for it), the ride went smoothly and I finished in a respectable time, having not pushed too hard and nailed all my nutrition and hydration over the 85km route.

So onto the hilly, hot 21km run, 3 laps around Pamplona (a fabulous city in every way).  After 1.5 laps I was told I was 16^th in my age group, and have to admit felt a little crestfallen given the 9^th place I posted the previous year.  With 5km of the run to go, the next group of athletes were apparently 2 mins ahead, so I decided, given I had been managing my body and felt form was still there, I would push up a bit to see if I could close the gap. 

Within 500m of the line I had caught the 2 athletes ahead and then had a sprint finish (not my forte) being pipped by one of the 2 by 0.1 of a second. 

A quick correction of results for start times and it turned out I was actually a minute ahead of him and had made up 10 places over the whole run, coming in 9^th overall for age group, 4^th for GB.  

Very happy with the result, especially as I was far less broken at the end than in previous years, and closer to the times of the winners.  Next year I go up an age group so hopefully I can rise up the table!  Onwards and upwards.

Camilla’s Report

After nearly not making the plane due to getting stuck in Heathrow airport security (don’t ask!), we made it to Bilbao. Our white van awaited us for a fun and chatty transfer to Pamplona. Then followed busy couple of days of logistics ahead with our swim start being 80k outside of Pamplona, where the race finished. 

Top trucker Paul Faithfull drove us along the beautiful scenic bike route on return from a practice swim at the aqua marine coloured reservoir (not sure how I’m ever going to swim in the UK again!).

After not being able to consume another carb and vowing to myself I’d never eat Haribo again, race day was upon us. 

Having gone into the race off the back of a virus, I decided I was there for a good time.

We were standing in transition pre race at 1.30pm (in the heat) for 20 minutes in our wetsuits, dripping in sweat before we started, I felt very happy when we were swimming through the bright blue reservoir, I had to pinch myself. I’m swimming in a gorgeous blue drinkable water in Spain at the Middle Distance European Championships. 

Climbing a hill into T1 I jumped on the bike, always happy to complete the swim. We rode a beautiful 85km rolling route through the hills to Pamplona which made for a great ride. The day was hotting up, and having got my warm water bottles of carbs through me, I managed to swap an empty one out for a bottle of cool plain water, a real treat!

Hit Pamplona and onto the run, legs felt great, I was away – stomach felt great until 3km into the half marathon, when it hit further down and yes I needed the loo!!! Rather than stopping and peeling off my trisuit that was by this time stuck to me, I decided not to do a Paula Radcliffe and steady the pace and continue running, 18km needing the loo wasn’t easy and with hindsight I should definitely have done ‘a Paula’. However the spirits and the turnout of the Spanish locals was enough to keep me running… just!

A beautiful run around Pamplona Old town, a difficult terrain of cobbles, gravel, hills and lots of tight turns made for a tough run. I was very pleased to finally cross that finish line and happy to take 7th in Age group (40-44) all things considering.

Looking forward to my next race and improving the run at Cotswold Classic in July.

Lake District Running Festival, Grasmere

 Report – Emma Parkin

Last weekend saw the Parkin family back in the Lake District for the second time this month, enjoying much more normal (rainy!) weather for the area.

Dave and Tessa were taking part in the OMM Lite, which saw them out on the fells for 2 days of orienteering – 5 hours on Saturday followed by 4 hours on Sunday. You are given the course map for the day as you cross the start line and the aim is to get to as many checkpoints as you can and back within the time limit.

It is a fabulous combination of orienteering and high mountain endurance running.

Dave and Tessa were delighted to get on the podium in second place in the family team category after around 28 miles of challenging terrain with nearly 10,000ft of height gain across the two days.

Meanwhile, I really enjoyed running the Grasmere Gallop 10k which is a beautiful trail run taking in Grasmere and Rydal Water.

It’s the banter at these races that always makes me smile.

Other runner: “I’ll stay right so you can come past.”

Me: “Thanks, but I’m sure you’ll overtake me again soon.”

Other runner: “I doubt that – you’re a proper runner in a proper running vest.”

Ha – how little he knew. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I was pleased to finish in 51:32 as 8th female and 3rd in the FV40 category. Even better, it was a lovely wooden medal and an extremely good piece of cake at the end.