Traditionally a quieter month, December bookends the year as we perhaps wind down and switch focus to celebrating with loved ones. The grind never stops though as some tick along quite nicely or target the early weeks to peak, so let’s set to it esteemed members of the Green and Black Army!
December saw GRC represented by 12 members racing at 4 events with 2 members travelling overseas.
Nominees
We start with the Valencia Marathon where club captain Samuel Jepson was the sole representative albeit he had his chief logistical support in club chairman Andrew Pask. Sadly, a debilitating chest infection for Sam just ten days prior to the race meant he “tried” to adopt a mindset of ‘enjoying the experience’ but still put in a gutsy performance clocking an impressive 3:11:58.
Next, we go to the Keyworth Turkey Trot where we have Thomas Lyons Napier, who ran the only PB of the day, albeit only a very small one! Tommy’s time of 1:56:04 beats his time from the Retford Half in 2022 by just 2 seconds.
We now go to our second overseas run and our runner up for December. Daniel Pearce travelled to Cyprus to race in the Ayia Napa Half Marathon. Now you would have thought after running every day this year totalling up to just under 3000 miles, his legs would want a rest, but obviously not as Daniel ran a personal best time in 1:31:32 which is a 7min 43 sec pb from the Great North Run ran in September.
Winner
December’s member of the month comes from the Telford 10k for an outstanding effort that was just 1 second from matching the best 10k time of 2023. Russel Whittaker lined up with a crop of the best UK runners and ran an amazing race gaining a 1 min 29 sec pb from the 2022 GRC Summer Solstice clocking 35:55.
Congratulations Russel on being our December’s Member of the Month
