Four Quakers were amongst the 382 starters at this year’s Fellsman long distance event.  Charles Bogg, Dave Thompson, Rob Towns and Annette Clarke are no strangers to endurance events, but even they found this one tough, as they fought their way around 62 miles of rugged Yorkshire Dales moorland.  The route, starting at Ingleton and finishing at Grassington, took them over several peaks, including Ingleborough and Whernside and involved 11,000 feet of climbing.  Navigating in the dark across miles of peat bogs was made even more demanding after two hours of torrential rain accompanied by hailstones.  142 people retired, including Charles Bogg, who suffering from a heavy cold, was cruelly forced to pull out at a checkpoint, little more than ten miles from the end. The rest of the team made it to the finish in 22 hours and 12 minutes, taking 171st place.   

Alasdair Tatham had a fruitful Tuesday night trip to Hexham, where he took third place at the Les Allcorn Memorial 10k, just two days after finishing second at the Ripon 10-miler. 

At the second Stewart Park 5k run, Andrew Wilson (29th, 22:25), Vickie Wilson (33rd, 22:51) and Julie Crocher (49th, 24:33) all improved on their previous times and were joined by Anthony Corbett (62nd, 26:00) making his first run at the midweek event. 

Ian Hammond (31st, 21:49) and Diane Gardner (87th, 28:28) both set course personal bests at last Saturday’s Albert Park time trial.  Also running were Graham Park (42nd, 23:09), Anthony Corbett (55th, 24:35) and Jeff Marriott (48th, 24:03), who combining his parental duties with his hobby, pushed his son around the 5k course in a buggy to record a new buggy pushing pb.

Sunday’s big regional race was the popular Pier to Pier run at South Shields; attracting around one thousand entrants.  Wayne Bramley (82nd, 48:42) was the first of seventeen Quakers to reach Roker.  He was followed by Toni Chaplin-Armer (301st, 55:57), Billy Harris (327th, 56:53), Wendy Colling (401st, 57:55), Jackie Nicholls (545th, 61:57), Sandra Park (572nd, 62:59), Carol Penney (619th, 63:57), Sally Singleton (632nd, 64:15) and Diane Adkins (677th, 65:57). Next was Julie Whinn (687th, 66:12) with Jackie Taylor (710th, 66:52), Kate Schweizer (713th, 66:52), Joanne Dewar (774th, 68:48), Gillian Harris (795th, 69:56), Alan Prest (805th, 70:34), Jill Wallis (910th, 76:46) and Bill Frankland (942nd, 81:57).