Tom Collinge was once again in fine form at the final Todmorden park 5k race of the Summer series, taking victory in an impressive 16:54. This keeping in line with previous consistent times (16:40 & 17:05) also managed to land him the overall win for the series with a total qualifying time of 50:39 ahead of some pretty stern competition from Dave Potter (Trawden Ac) in second place & Burnley Ac’s Daniel Balshaw in third.
Over to the Ladies race and week four saw a new course record!! Uk Netrunner Hannah Oldroyd cruised to victory over the five laps with a storming run of 18:14. The battle for the series in the ladies had been one of epic proportions with two runners literally ‘going at it’ in each and every race of the series with some great times along the way. In the end, Salford Harrier Annabeth Orton narrowly edged out Autumn Howard of Trawden Ac by only 27 seconds over the combined times with both ladies three best times being under 20 minutes – what a cracking effort! There is also a mention to third placed runner Natalya Irvine of Blackburn Harriers who is an under 18 runner, certainly one to look out for in the future.
One of the main ethos of Cannonball events is the fact we pride ourselves that our races are for everyone, not just the faster runners and each time we hold a race series we award prizes for runners who show improvement to their times over the races. 42 runners qualified as eligible by showing improvement on their base time from week one and the most improved tag was thoroughly deserved by David Howard of Trawden AC with a really impressive 11.8% improvement in time from 24:31 to 21:38 which is amazing in just a few short weeks. The most improved female was Alison Butterworth (U/A) with a 10.9% slash to her time from 37:03 to 33:01 – over 4 minutes dropped.
Overall we hope you have been as happy with the series as we have. We have seen both male & female course records smashed – who knows just how low they may go next year. We have seen a record turnout for race 2 which we were grateful to the Pendle & Burnley GP for including it on their series this year. The new finish to the course seemed to be well received with good feedback from runners.
As usual, these races could not happen without such phenominal support from the runners & good turnouts from many of the local running clubs, there will be extra incentive for runners if their club chooses any of our races to be included on their GP/Club Championship for 2015 – E-mail john@cannonballevents.co.uk for details.
Thank-you to all our sponsors, GW Fitness & Rehab, Sportshoes.com & Serious Supplements for the continued support and belief in what we are trying to achieve. Also thanks to Lynne Ainsworth & Mark McConville for the use of pictures taken at the races for publicity purposes.
So that’s a wrap for the summer series of 2014, it’s definitely been our best yet, don’t worry though it’ll soon be winter and you get to do it all again! I’ll leave you with one final picture taken of Improver winner David Howard at race 4, this, for me, sums up what it should all be about!
Cannonball Events 