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Busy April time for Lewes AC athletes and the club
With club athletes competing in a range of UK events and travelling to France to compete in the Loire Valley trail races it has been a hectic week of so for the club.
The leading performance must be Lewis Sida who came 24th overall in Manchester Marathon and the first over 45 runner. His time of 2hours 36mins 27secs has now ranked him the second over 45 runner in the country. Also at Manchester Gustavo Iriarte ran a new personal best of 3hours 10mins.
Closely following Lewis in the marathon stakes is Mike Ellicock who was 7th overall in the recent Brighton Marathon and the first over 40 runner. With the first five in the race all from Kenya or Ethiopia Mike was the second British runner to finish with a time of 2hours 38mins 52secs.
As part of the Brighton Marathon weekend there was a 10K race where Izzy Coomber from the Lewes club ran a phenomenal time 36mins 34secs. This was not only placed her 3rd in the race but gave her a life time best by 54 seconds. Izzy was only 25 seconds behind Gemma Steel an England international runner who amongst other achievements won a bronze medal in the European Cross Country Championships.
Running his first road marathon at Brighton Luke Bonnici ran an amazing 3:11 closely followed by Miles Shepherd who finished with a time of 3:12. Others in the Brighton Marathon were John Stanford (3:28); Tony Deacon (3:30); Sarah Godley (3:51); Tony Stilwell (3:54); Shelley Cornes (4:03); Elizabeth Hilton (4:07) and Philip Westbury (4:13)
Taking part in shorter races were teams from the club competing in the Sussex Road Relay Championships at Christ’s Hospital School grounds. The leading performance was by the under 13 boy’s team who won the gold medal. Jack Gardener (6.19) Sam Horner (6.33) and Will Carey (6.04) competed the course in a total time of 18mins 56secs which was just 4 seconds ahead of the Brighton and Hove team.
Losing out by just 2 seconds to the under 15 boys team from Chichester were the Lewes team who won the silver medal. Leo Brewer (5.42); Ben Walters (6.03) and Ben Martin (5.32) finished with a combined time of 17mins 17secs.
With an equally tight finish the Lewes AC senior men’s team just missed winning the silver medal by 6 seconds. With a combined time of 64mins 10secs the six man team for Lewes gained the bronze medal just behind a Phoenix team. Patrick Hough (9.57); Matt Bradford (10.29); Chris Gilbert (11.01); Josh Burgess (10.55); David Bradford (10.47) and Callum Upton (11.01):
Whilst all of this activity was going on in the UK a party of 17 Lewes AC members travelled to the Loire Valley in France to compete in races organised by the club’s twin club AS Marolles. It was the 30th year of travelling to compete in France and a mounted and engraved clock was presented to the French club to celebrate the 30 years of friendship and competition.