Friday 11th August saw the award-winning Sleaford 10K race take place round the Lincolnshire countryside.
Starting and finishing at Scredington Village Hall, the route is on quiet roads with some gentle hills and a welcome descent down Scredington Road back into the village. The evening was very warm and a slight headwind at halfway was a mixed blessing, on one hand cooling runners down but also hampering efforts a little.
As the race was one of the fixtures on Grantham Running Club’s own GP series, it attracted a great turnout, with 29 members taking to the start line, the biggest club representation at the race.
First back in the green and black was Joaquim Jeronimo in 36:31 which netted him 7th place overall.
Daniel Pearce, battling the heat and race-fatigued legs managed to exactly match his time from 2022 of 41:49 was second back for GRC.
Russell Maksymiw had set himself a target of one last hurrah at the 10K distance, aiming to go “balls out” after a PB. He achieved this in fine style, digging in and crossing the line in 44:22, beating his previous best set in 2018.
The club had 2 top 10 placings for the women with Carlene Veasey in the silverware with the trophy for third female and Hannah Whittaker in 7th place. Carlene ran a hugely impressive debut in 45:12, running closely with Hannah for the first half of the race. Hannah wasn’t feeling her best and slowed a little but still finished in 47.38 and 4th in her age category.
For Kev Wallace, this was his debut at this distance, and he shook off hamstring niggles to run a solid sub-50 time of 49:02.
For Zoe Wragg the event was tough, having felt apprehensive beforehand. However, after diving into a strong start, she did better than she was expecting with an impressive time of 52:50 and 3rd in her age category. The cake afterwards was an extra bonus.
Jacqueline Anderson found the run tough after a start but with the help of the marshals and GRC cheer squad she hung on and was thrilled to come away with a time of 53:29, nearly a 2-minute PB.
Sinead McDonnell has recently been making a comeback to racing and building her long runs up again. She was happy with 53:26.
Laura Pigott continues to make great strides as she comes back to training. Her time of 53:41 smashed her old PB time only set at Langtoft in April this year, knocking over 3 minutes off, a huge leap.
For Julie Gilbert the prospect of Friday night racing resulted in some doom mongering with other GRC-ers on the start line. However, she turned the negative thoughts into action and things turned out much better than expected with a time of 53:29, giving her a great benchmark 10K for the club GP series.
Emma Duncan also joined the GRC PB train, with a brilliantly consistent run that knocked nearly 2 minutes off her PB, flying over the finish line in 53:51. This beat her previous set at Langtoft and added to her 2023 tally of PBs.
Holly Wragg (53:56) was only a few seconds behind Emma and continues her fantastic PB streak, her training efforts paying off and earning her a PB of over a minute.
Yvette Taylor has been picking up her mileage and training again this year and was justly rewarded with a fantastic PB time of 1:01:47, eclipsing her previous best set way back in 2017 by around 2 and a half minutes. Right next to her was Kathleen Gray making a solid comeback to racing in her first event since 2021.
Runners as always were rewarded with a huge spread of cakes and tea, a hallmark of the event which provides a great deal of its appeal.
First male was Paul Lyons in 34:19, first female was Judith Broadbent of Lincoln Wellington in 43:13.
Full Results
Andrew Pask 42:34
Matt Fryer 45:43
Paul Davis 47:47
Stuart Baty 48:20
Paul Jepson 50:43
Tony Boyle 51:05
Michelle Parczuk 52:01
Esther Fraser-Betts 52:28
Sylv Hull 52:26
Caroline Davis 53:57
Sean Keegan 55:22
Richard Urquhart 57:24
Rachel Pattison 1:00:09
Yvonne Buckley 1:12:30