A race of two halves

Team SLGR turned the Dartford 10k Orange and Black this morning and there were some amazing times on a pretty tough course.

The first half was predominately down hill or flat but just after the 5k point was the first hill and it was a big one, followed by an undulating Roman Villa Road, a cheeky downhill to Green Street Green and then the final long climb up Trolling Down Hill. If anyone managed a negative split on that, you deserve an extra medal.

First man home was James Merry who managed to claim the 10k team record in 43.23 with Steve Burgess close behind on 44.02. We had 5 runners under 50 minutes and 18 under the hour. First female was Lesley Pilson again in 51.35 and 7th team member home, she’s having a cracking year. Hot on her heels were Fleur, Suzanne, Natasha, Sarah Honour and Janet all under the hour. Great work from the whole team.

We did have a couple of casualties with Darren and Luke pulling up with injuries but they both managed to hobble to the finish and Janet having a wobble at the finish. The First Aid team were fabulous and there were also plenty of really good marshals out on the course. Hopefully everyone will be on the mend soon and fighting fit.

I had a chat with Stuart Wood from Road Runners at the finish and unfortunately they didn’t have as many runners as they had last year and actually made a loss with the cost of the event coming in at around £5500. Hopefully next year they can still afford to do it and we can rope some more runners in to join us. Incidentally the ice creams were his idea and they were definitely a hit and an improvement on the meat pie that we got last year.

I have pillaged some of the photos from Facebook.

It’s only two weeks until our next GP event, the Wingham 10k. I need to pull my finger out and get a better time as this was the longest I have run since May and everyone’s overtaking me.

Well done Team SLGR