Week Ending - 2020/12/13

DOUBLE DELIGHT FOR HAPPY HANNAH

The inaugural Badgers 2020 Super League finished in style at the weekend with winning captain Hannah Craig having several reasons to celebrate. Firstly, she ran the fastest 5K of her life to help keep her Cool Runnings team at the top of the table, a position they have occupied since week one and to cap it off, she topped the individual standings after completing eight rounds of fantastic competition. The 11 person team went into the final week with a diminishing advantage over the two other sides capable of taking the top prize, but a host of solid performances enabled them to take third place in the final race, even to secure the league title from Nicki Bowman’s Tight Nuts team by three points.

One of the cornerstones of the teams’ success was their consistency, with almost everybody turning out for each race. Just three absences were recorded from the 88 possibilities and they were enforced through illness, not at all bad during a pandemic. Jo Hardy continued her upward curve with a 5K PB of 24:39, 13 seconds quicker than her skipper while Leesa Dennis, Mike Wyant, Dave Jenkinson and Dave Bailey all weighed in with significant contributions. Dave Buck was back in the fold and with Lee Millership bringing some much needed gravitas to proceedings the Cool Runnings juggernaut was proving difficult to stop. Jo Davies, Paul Grubb and Sharon Jackson made up the rest of the squad.

The handicap based tournament was well received by the majority of members, many of whom managed to run times faster than ever before despite being outside of a bona fide race environment. One such runner was speedster Aaron Chetwynd. The Baddesley man welcomed his son Cian into the world during the summer but having a new born at home has only made him run faster. During the tournament, he shattered a number of his best times including performances quicker than a range of club records such as one mile, five mile and ten mile. Here he took 8 seconds off Chris Baxter’s impressive 5K club best with an extraordinary run of 16:09. A sub 16 time surely awaits the Baddesley man once normal race conditions re-emerge. His wife SJ had a super tournament too, finishing second overall while Karen Draper was earmarked as one to watch heading into this competition after some big improvements in the training leading up to it. She too did not disappoint, taking huge chunks of time of her previous bests to wind up third in the standings at the end of the tournament, which saw almost 100 taking part.

The second placed team fought valiantly to the end with Vikki Smith running a best ever 28:02 over 5K and Luke Neal once again impressing in 19:04. The race was won by Robert Boland’s Giant Striders, the captain himself clocking 19:15, his best ever leading from the front. He was on hand to help pace team-mate Chris Davies to his best time of 21:29, a fine achievement from the man who has run 5K a day all year, raising funds for the CDH UK charity. This marked improvement helped him pip Aaron Chetwynd, albeit via the handicapping system, to finish top male in the overall standings. Janet Crumpton ran her best ever in 26:22 and Jason Clover, another to have an exceptional few weeks, clocked 22:20 to take another PB and finish top V50 runner in the competition. His wife Kerry, competing in a rival team had a tournament to remember too as she finished with yet another PB, taking her 5K time below 25 minutes for the very first time.

Maggi Savin-Baden finished the number one V60 lady overall with Dave Bailey matching the feat in the men’s division. David Jackson was top v40 man and Vicky London and Leesa Dennis also scooped age grade wins. Andy Smith was the top scoring runner on the day, backing up his win in the preceding week. The runners now look forward to a spot of downtime before kicking on again in the New Year. 53 runners did not miss a race across the series and many will be hoping to take their excellent new found form into 2021. For those who found improvement more difficult to come by, they will take great heart from being involved in a team activity once again and forged some good new friendships in what has been the hardest of years.