Race Report 18th March 2024

We have had a very busy week of racing for the Team Blizard community with action on a variety of distances/surfaces and even countries!

 

Kicking the week off we saw Sheffield athlete Seth Kirby making the short trip back to Portugal to run in the Falesia 5k which many of you on here know as the loop used on our recent warm weather training camp.

Seth gave a great account of himself coming in a fine 8th place overall and backed this up just over 24  hours later in the Barnsley 1500m track race. Now that is some travelling to do races!

 

 

Same night and same track saw another Portugal athlete in Lydia Race Tighe take a fine 2nd place overall in the 5000m as she used the race to sharpen up for the North Lincs 10k but more on that race later.

 

5km races were popular over the weekend and the Wigan 5k provided Leed’s athlete Jonathan Stewart with a blast out while over in Boston USA fast improving Wayne Singleton flew the flag for Team Blizard.

 

 

 

Podium 5k held in Leicester gave for those who went and watched on Youtube a glimpse of hopefully the direction of what road racing can go to with a festival type theme with lots of high quality racing being also entertaining for the watching public and well done Chris Barnes and his team.

We had several athletes running and there was a fine new personal best from coached athlete Sam Gilliver and also from brother and sister duo of Freddie Fearn and Alice Fearn.

 

Moving up in distance to the 10k saw the fast North Lincs 10k and half marathon held on Sunday and although the weather could have been better for racing the quality was still red hot!

In the 10k there was fine runs from Claire Windle , Wes Taylor both taking 2nd place in their respective AG while regular training partner Peter Twigg showed a good turn of speed helped by those Wednesday speed sessions at the airport.

Lydia Race fresh from a fast 5k on Wednesday evening once again finished 2nd overall and 1st V35 in the 10k to once again show a rich vein of form.

 

The ever popular Ashby 20 that gives you a hoodie and cheese cob at the end provided happy hunting ground for several athletes and there were 2 massive new personal bests for North Derbyshire athletes in Shaun Johnson ( 3+minute personal best ) and Dawn Bradley who took a massive 21 minutes off her previous time as both athletes can now look forward to the Manchester marathon with confidence.

 

 

The final race to mention was the North Lincs half marathon where we had so many athletes running in and using it as their final race before their spring marathons.

 

 

In no particular order there was sterling runs/new personal best and great efforts from:

Shaun Paul Yates Michael Skelton Dean Thomas/Tobias Bellis /Aaron Lowery Ian Maudsley/Jimmy Hanrahan/Jody MurrayMatty BellFletch and Sarah Sanderson to name a few.

 

 

However, this week’s “Run of the week” goes to another coached athlete in Elle Warren who only a few week’s ago was struggling and has shown a great attitude to turn it around and get back into her London marathon preparation and only gone and pb in the half when only a few weeks ago she was really struggling.

Here at Team Blizard we love to see that type of fight within an athlete.

 

 

Massive well done to everyone who raced and also messaged in with their results it really does help when we are putting the race report together.

Until next week……keep training!