A run in the park, a day in the lakes

ERRA National Road Relays – Sutton Park

The 6 stage relays is one of the most anticipated road running events in the calendar.  The quality of competition is excellent, each year “names” from the athletics world take part wearing their club vests.  This year was no different with Stewart McSweyn, Philip Sesemann, Omar Ahmed and others being the top drawers in the event.

LP&S had a strong Senior Men’s team in Ross Harrison, Se Loughlin, Joe Niven, Dan Jones, Alex Procter and Jonny Bride, all of who have been finding their form recently. In leg 1, Ross ran 18:02 putting the team in 25^th place for a positive start. Se took 3 places and finished in 18:14 leaving LPS in 22^nd. Solid runs by Joe (19:27), Alex (20:06), Dan(20:58) and Jonny (20:24) meant the team finished in a very credible 50^th place overall.

The full set of results are here nat623 (race-results.co.uk) – and a scan of them illustrates how strong individual performances were.

Mid Lancs Cross Country, Kendal

Saturday saw the return of cross country at the picturesque Westmoreland Showgrounds.  Cross Country captains Andrew Foster, John Dickinson, Rachel Yates and Debbie Crook ensured that LPS fielded 2 full senior teams (Male and Female).  

Each athlete performed well completed the gruelling course, but a special mention to Mike & Lisa Procter, who in their 1^st ever events for LPS finished as point scorers for their teams and Dave Cartwright , also making his league debut and finding out that spikes are better than trail shoes.

Overall, our Senior men finished 9^th in the vets league whilst our ladies a superb 2^nd place.

The wider LPS team was made up with our young athletes performing well on what was a true cross country course. 10 year old George Henry making his LPS debut enjoyed his 1^st run out and Isabelle Elliot, who literally made it to the start line with 15 seconds to spare after being held up in traffic were our youngest competitors and both are now looking forward to the next event. 

We’ve a strong U13 boys team, 2 of whom ran on Saturday.  Brillant runs by Matthew Bennett (12:02) and William Roberts (12:12) ensured both finished in the top 15.

Mina Griffin was our sole U15 girl representative and she finished a few places outside the top half in a strong field.

We saw the benefit of having a full team in the U15 boys as we finished in 4^th place with Dan Procter having a superb race finishing in 9^th position. Dan was ably supported by William Henry and Dan Berry who delivered 4^th place.

We are short on numbers for our U17 age group, but the two we have continue to impress.  Sarah Yates in the U17 women finished a very strong 4^th place and Reuben Anderson looked very confident in the 6k event.

A link to videos of the event can be found here

Manchester Half Marathon

Kirsty Longley has had a weekend to celebrate.  She finished 11^th female and 1sr Veteran 45.  All this after qualifying to represent England Masters in XC and 10k champs. In the same event, it was great to see Tiffany Penfold back as she finished 77^th female in 1:30.

Park Run Success for Harrison

And finally, well done to Harrison Wright, another of our 11 year olds who was 1^st finisher at Southport Park run.