Last Sunday was the first staging of the Ashford & District combined half marathon and marathon event; a 2-lap course from Sandyacres through Westwell, Charing  and back again taking in the Pilgrims Way. A big thank you to all those that helped make the event a great success including runners, marshalls, helpers and organisers NiceWork!

First home for the men in the marathon event was Paul Galt finishing in an impressive time of 2:50:28, the first lady representing Vegan Runners was Alex Portwine in 3:41:50. In the half marathon event Steve Graves led the field finishing in 1:21:00 with first lady not far behind in 1:33:04. Congratulations to all runners that completed this challenging course! Full results can be found at NiceWork!

From the club perspective we had three members running the half marathon event. All ran personal bests; Alan Kirby was 7th overall in 1:31:38 (over 3 minutes quicker than his previous best), Luke Kadinopolous was 53rd in 1:50:29 and Colin Howard broke the 2-hour mark for the first time finishing in 1:54:44 (70th overall). Great achievements from all three of these fellers but we shouldn’t forget all those runners at A&D that gave up the best part of their Sunday to help make this event the success it was!