Great North Run, 8th Sept 2019
A beautiful sunny day, some great times and lots of PBs … a very enjoyable trip to the coast! And it gets more enjoyable as time goes by and the pain of the 11th mile fades into a distant memory!
There were some excellent performances by Claremonters – Jason dipped under 1 hour 20 mins, Catherine under 1 hour 30 and a number of other runners getting PBs for the GNR. Without taking anything away from Jason, I think it was the Claremont “elite” ladies who stole the show with Catherine being 15th female and Sarah 40th in the mass race, whilst the incredible Joyce Archibold is an inspiration to us all being 2nd in the over 80 category! We had other top ten age group positions too – Sarah in the F40 category, myself in the M60s and Mungai in the M65s.
For the 2nd year running, I ran with Sarah Kerr, and we knocked over 4 minutes off last year’s run. (We started as a threesome but Christophe had a toilet stop not far after Gateshead Stadium – otherwise he would have got a PB too!) I would definitely recommend finding a running partner for next year as you keep each other going – I think we were both scared of slowing the pace in case we let the other one down! So thanks to Sarah for getting me my fastest time for many years.
For some reason the BBC neglected to interview wor Nina this year (by the way, fabulous pacing once again). I think Gabby Logan must have been scared of the competition. So no Claremont video stars this year, but Maria Duenas got a nice shout-out from Steve Cram. The audio also featured Cath Robson’s cow bell, Gill’s banging and general noise making – these were clearly heard as Brigid Kosgei approached Heworth. Unfortunately the editor chose to cut to a different topic just as they were about to come into view.
Gill and Cath were part of the CHUF charity cheering station and hopefully managed to cheer on the Sky Blues as well as the red-vested CHUF runners – it was certainly a novelty to steal a quick kiss off the missus en route to South Shields! There was good support too from numerous other non-running Claremonters too – a good send-off from Hazel, Julie D and Rob, with shouts of support from Mandy on the Central Motorway; Lucy Dunbar, Ay, Tara and David Lydall on Tyne Bridge; Heather and Paul on the Felling By-Pass with Luke and Lorna further down the course.
Then to top it all, Sumanth was at the end to present us with our medals.
A grand day out, indeed!
| Time | Runner | |
| 1:19:58 | Jason Hall | PB |
| 1:28:06 | Catherine Young | 46th female (15th lady in mass race), PB |
| 1:31:39 | Sarah Kerr | 7th F40, 74th female (40th lady in mass race), PB |
| 1:31:39 | Tom Tinsley | 2nd M60 |
| 1:35:24 | Simon Lowe | |
| 1:37:29 | Mungai Waria | 4th M65, PB |
| 1:37:50 | Christophe Duhaut | |
| 1:38:42 | Arthur Liu | PB |
| 1:38:56 | Maddie Day | |
| 1:39:06 | Dean O’Brien | PB |
| 1:40:44 | Maria Duenas | |
| 1:42:36 | David Devennie | |
| 1:44:05 | Richard Slack | PB |
| 1:48:08 | Kat Truong | PB |
| 1:54:49 | Alan Dunning | |
| 1:56:04 | Brian Hegarty | |
| 1:56:45 | Nina Jentl | PB |
| 1:59:26 | Nina Jensen | 2 hour pacer |
| 2:01:55 | Vicky Moore | |
| 2:09:41 | John Bell | |
| 2:10:28 | Marie Slack | |
| 2:12:56 | Chris Gillie | |
| 2:12:56 | Daisy Martin | |
| 2:15:12 | Janet Palmer | |
| 2:17:05 | Tara Hipwood | |
| 2:22:48 | Joyce Archibold | 2nd F80 |
| 2:29:33 | Dave Manners | |
| 2:31:15 | Terry Welsh |
Some photos of the day on Flickr:
