Weekend 13/14th April

Clayton-le-Moors Harriers scored a wonderful 1-2 at Saturday’s wet and windy Langdale Daffodil 10K road race. Barnoldswick’s Tom Brewster battled his way along flooded roads to record his first ever race win in 35:39, crossing the line just 22 seconds before club mate, Breton Holdsworth, recent winner of the Dentdale 14, in second place on this occasion. Tom’s win is the culmination of over two years of hard training that has seen him improve continuously and has included recent winning performances at the Burnley Parkrun. The icing on the cake was an 11^th place finish (1^st M55) for Tom’s dad, Roger – himself a winner of many races in the past – which gave Clayton Harriers the team award.

Meanwhile, three female members made the long journey to Northern Ireland to contest the first British Fell Race Championship counter, based at Silent Valley in the Mourne Mountains. After 10 miles and 4500’ of ascent over very rough terrain and in very testing conditions, our first counter was Jean Brown in 84^th position (14^th female) in 2:17:12, ably supported by Wendy Dodds (139^th; 1^st F60) and Katy Thompson (157^th). Their combined performance was good enough to give them 3^rd position in the female vets’ teams.

Finally, much further afield, Phil Hanson completed the gruelling Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert. Phil finished the 160 mile event in under 37 hours, which gave him 319^th place out of 970 finishers (over 1000 started).