RTMGP Results come in and Great Results at the Manchester Half
The end of the fell-running season saw several awards for Horwich runners. Matt Fellthrop rounded off a fine season by winning the Run The Moors GP standings and in doing so, took the club’s own fell running championship in the process. Gary Chadderton and Douglas Fleming won the V60 and V65 classes respectively whilst for the women Katherine Newall won the V50 and Sandra Kelley took the V55. Several came second in their classes, Adam MacDonald did this at V40, Kevin Newall at V50, Nick Kelly at V55 and Mark Seddon was just behind Gary at V60. For the women, Helen MacDonald came third in the V40 and Alison Mort was second at V45.
One of the UK’s biggest half-marathons took place in Manchester for a route that took runners down the western side of the city, finishing near Old Trafford cricket ground. Three Harriers turned up with Luke Foley just missing out on the top 50 of over 22,000 finishers with a splendidly paced run of 1:09:15. Former chairman Glynne Lever kept his comeback going apace with 1:53:56 and George Butler took the tape in 2:13:42.
October usually means that the cross-country season gets underway and Horwich are competing on two fronts, with a team in the Manchester League and another in the Red Rose League. Both started this weekend as Manchester’s first race was at Woodbank Park in unusually dry and fast conditions whilst the Red Rose was at Leigh Sports Village. The senior men’s teams came 4th, 10th and 16th out of 46 in Manchester where Julian Goudge was second V50 over the 10k course in 37:17, Marcus Taylor was third V55 in 41:39, Adriam Bramham took first V60 in 41:50 whilst Joe Mercer and James Kevan led the team home in 9th and 11th overall, in times of 34:48 and 34:56 respectively. The women came 25th out of 56 over a slightly shorter course with Milly Lever leading them home in 44 minutes exactly, ably supported by Helen MacDonald, Alice Tucker and Sophie Walton with less than seven minutes separating all four.
Over in Leigh the senior men came 13th out of 15 with Adam MacDonald leading them home in 40:22 whilst the veterans came 8th out of 12 with MacDonald again being the first marker. Alison Mort had a very fine race as the sole representative in the senior women’s event, coming in 14th out of 89 runners in a time of 23:45.
From cross-country to across countries as several Harriers found themselves in mainland Europe. Husband-and-wife duo Sean and Maria McMyler took in the fairytale sights of the Hungarian capital Budapest in running the marathon there on a course that largely followed the course of the River Danube and indeed other Harriers, including Richard O’Reilly and Marcus Taylor have raced there in the past. Maria completed the course in an excellent 3:43:30 whilst Sean wasn’t far behind in 3:45:06. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Mr. O’Reilly was found in the German city of Leipzig, where after coming 8th at Küchenholz parkrun in a time of 20:40, he took on the Decathlon Leipzig 10K the day after featuring a start and finish next to one of mainland Europe’s most imposing monuments, the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, built to commemorate the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. He took second V55 there in 41:53 on a heavily amended course due to roadworks. Fellow press spokesman Steve Thomasson was also there for the half-marathon which appeared considerably longer on his Garmin, and he finished in 1:54:32.
