Before we kick off with the run through of nominations for November, a little book keeping is in order to note, for historical reasons, the performances of Sarah Chynoweth and Jonny Palmer, who both comfortably claimed the highest-ever positions in the very competitive North Midlands Cross Country League at Corby (plus great runs at the National Cross Country Relays) but weren’t nominated as they have been regularly this year for arguably greater achievements. Similar could be said for quite a few other club members ho did not receive nomination in November.
The Caythorpe Dash saw Matt Kidd nominated for his storming race to finish second and not far off his road 10K best at this multi-terrain event.
Rob Howbrook was nominated for his efforts at the flood affected Derby 10 Mile race. His 1:06:14 clocking was perhaps one of the performances of the year considering it was a near two-minute PB on a twisty, hairpin heavy, course. Moreover, at the inaugural Mallory Park Winter Series race, Rob improved on his one mile PB by five seconds – 5:31 currently sees him ninth in the UK rankings for 2019 in the V60 age category.
Kate Marshall pulled off a similar Derby 10 / Mallory Park combination. Her 1:36:13 time at Derby was a 5:29 improvement on her 10 mile PB and 28:10 at Mallory Park bettered her old 5K best by twelve seconds.
The Mallory Park races yielded several nominations. Naomi Jepson-Rivers was nominated for her 23:57 5K time that improved her PB by 26 seconds. Joaquim Jeronimo improved on his 5K by six seconds with a 17:35 clocking – his nomination bolstered by his first ever podium finish with the club, coming home third. Paul Jepson had a fantastic race over 5K to better his PB by 78 seconds with 23:11. This earned him a co-runner up spot in the November MOM poll.
The Long Sutton 10K saw three nominations. Lisa Williams bettered her PB by 3:48 when she finished in 1:01:00.
Wendy Smith finished co-runner up for November with a 2:38 PB finishing in 1:06:08 and Kate Yates posted a time of 46:50 in her first recorded performance over 10K, a result which is likely to see her finish fifth in the GRC 10K rankings for our women in 2019. At the Nottingham 5K Winter Series Kate ran 22:40 which was 36 seconds faster than her best parkrun. CJ Walker Lees ran 33:11 at the same race, which was a PB by 74 seconds and saw her nominated as a result.
Stewart Pick was nominated for his seventeen second PB at the Doncaster 10K. While this may not sound like a huge improvement Stewart has improved considerably over the past twelve months, lowering his PB from 47:40 at the Stilton Stumble in October 2018 to 44:28 at Doncaster in November 2019. At the same race Sam Dodwell, with 43:15, equalled the time he had run in October’s Leeds Abbey Dash. Two days later that race was found to be slightly short and times were officially annulled for personal bests, making his Doncaster time a ‘new PB’ by 38 seconds.
The winner of November Member of the Month becomes the first member to win the accolade twice since the format was revamped at the beginning of 2018. Having dabbled with less conventional training methods to gain a ‘PB’ at the ill-fated Leeds Abbey Dash, Sylv Hull reaped the benefits of tried and trusted practices such as cross country racing (XC relays, North Midlands and Lincs League) and structured interval training to firstly run 25:27 and an eighty second PB at the Notts Winter Series 5K, then a four minute twelve second PB (2:05:21) over the half marathon at Silverstone. Sylv’s PB at Silverstone earned a WMA score of 54.27% up 3% in a year!
Congratulations Sylv on being November 2019 Member of the Month!