CLAREMONTRoad Runners

Brass Monkey, 16th January 2022

The Brass Monkey half-marathon, though in York, is very popular with runners from the North East. It is a fast, flat course, which I think is one of the main attractions! Four Claremonters went down for it this year and all did record excellent times. Well done!

Kris Axon sends this report of the day:

“4 jolly members of CRR made the trip to York for the Brass Monkey Half Marathon. With rain forecast at 10am, the journey down looked dull and ominous. Having heard others talk about the Brass Monkey course as a potential PB course, we were excited to get out but still trying to burn off the excess Christmas Turkey.

Starting off far too quickly in the first few miles, I had almost forgotten what it was like to run further than 10km. The distance soon caught up on me, with the latter half being significantly slower than the first, however I managed to pull it together at the end to finish just over 74mins, only a minute over my PB set at the GNR last year.

Maria described her race in a similar vein; saying she was not in a good place in the second half but her fellow runners alongside her managed to talk her round to putting in a quick few miles at the end, averaging 7:30 pace throughout; very impressive! I am waiting to hear if this counted as a PB for Maria; I think there was only a second or two in it!

Mungai’s splits also increased mile on mile but he did manage to pull out a rapid few miles at the latter stages. A nice way to round off another casual 50 mile week for Mungai!

Mark’s race splits looked a little like mine with a rapid first 5 miles followed by a consistently marginally slower latter half. Overall a very impressive run from Mark, only a whisker off his PB time he set at the GNR in 2021.

All of the Claremonters except from me managed an impressive Parkrun the day prior to their impressive HM – that was obviously where I went wrong! At least I will know for next time!

Overall it was a great day out, the weather stayed cool and fair, the course was unbelievably flat and there was a great standard of competition to keep us all running at our desired paces! Well done team Claremont!”