The Annual Cleevewold 14 Mile race, 28 March 2011
</p>
With 6 men and 3 women, Striders fielded one women’s team and two men’s team. The men’s A-team finished in an excellent 6th place which is no mean feat considering that this race attracts runners from around the region and beyond, whilst the men’s B-team took 14th place and the women finished 2nd out of 3 teams.
This was a great turnout and performance for the club in a race which can put runners off due to the distance and the punishing terrain.
In the individual race, Rachael Elkins was in the kind of form that brought her an outstanding PB in Fleet last weekend and was initially well-placed to pick up the prize for first woman.
However, a slight navigational mishap around the 8-mile point probably cost her the prize. Despite this, Elkins made up lost ground and recovered well to move strongly back through the positions and finish in 46th place as 4th woman overall in a time of 2:04:05.
Elkins was followed by Jill Harsent and Dawn Addinall who were in sight of one another for much of the race and finished within 2 minutes of each other to take 101st place and 103rd place, and finish in 2:43:16 and 2:45:02 respectively.
There were also some strong runs from the men – Glyn Bagnall made a welcome return to a race which he won in 1993, and produced an excellent comeback to finish 20th in a superb time of 1:52:57.
Bagnall was well supported in the A Team by Charles Goodwin and James Gibbs who both came in under the 2-hour mark. Goodwin was pleased with a time of 1:53:43 which won him 21st place, whilst Gibbs took several minutes off his time of last year with 1:58:36 to finish in 31st.
Meanwhile, Adam Cary showed continued improvement. He took 47th place in a time of 2:05:16, and he was followed by Jamie Paterson who took 53rd place in a time of 2:07:40, and Barnaby Bamford who finished in 75th place with a time of 2:15:26.
The race was won by Martin Cox from Salford Harriers who broke away from Cheltenham Harriers’ Jeremy Bradley to record a time of 1:31:08.
Chris Driskell</p>