Elmore 7-mile road race

Striders of Croydon had 12 finishers in the Elmore 7-mile road race at Chipstead on Saturday, which was the fifth race in this year’s Surrey Road League. They were led by Tatsuya Okamoto who ran well to place 14th in 40 minutes 33. Martin Filer was 19th (41:13), Andrew Aitken 21st (41:25) and Conor O’Hara-Barrett completed the scoring team in 43rd (44:00). Luke Burden was 50th in 44:32, just ahead of Steve Corfield who recorded the same time and was second in the M60 age-group. Erik Schrijnemaekers was 80th (47:41), Simon Webster 104th (49:58), Tim Lawlor 118th (50:51), Mick Turner 138th (52:20), Stephen Allport 161st (54:58) and Steve Tyler 249th (93:23).

Earlier on Saturday, Striders had 101 finishers in the various weekly parkruns. Niamh Vincent was the first woman to finish the South Norwood parkrun, placing tenth overall (21:21). There were second places for Graeme Drysdale in the South Norwood parkrun (19:46) and for Dan Forrester in the Lloyd parkrun (20:03). Nikki Javan was the second woman to finish the Okanagan parkrun in British Columbia, placing eighth overall (23:58). Jon Dean was third in the Bressay parkrun in the Shetland Islands (23:00). Ellyw Evans was the third woman to finish the South Norwood parkrun, placing 24th overall (23:19).

At Battersea Park last week, Andrew Aitken set a new Striders M45 3000 metre record of 9 minutes 58.3. This made him the oldest Strider ever to run the distance in less than ten minutes, and was more than 17 seconds faster than the previous record, set by John McGilvray in 1991.