James Bennett 63rd in Vitality Big Half Marathon

James Bennett, from Striders of Croydon, had an excellent run to place 63rd in a large field in the Vitality Big Half-Marathon, at Tower Bridge on Sunday. His time of 72 minutes 05 seconds was only 30 seconds outside his own club record, set at Oxford two years ago.

On the same day, Tatsuya Okamoto ran very well to place fourth out of 452 finishers in the River Thames Half-Marathon at Walton. His time of 77 minutes 29 seconds lifted him to 18th place in Striders’ all-time club rankings.

Striders had several runners in the Brighton Half-Marathon. They were led by Dave Shaw, who ran 85 minutes 58 seconds, followed by Andy Perks (86.37) and Liam Redmond (87.22). There were good performances from the club’s two oldest finishers. 68-year-old Barry Finch ran 1 hour 51 minutes 28, while Andy Elliott set a club over-70 record of 2 hours 4 minutes 59.

Despite the wintry conditions, Striders had 36 finishers in the various weekly parkruns on Saturday (20 at Lloyd Park and 16 at other venues). Steph Upton was the second woman to finish the Riddlesdown parkrun, placing 19th overall in 22 minutes 14 seconds.