Veteran Simon leads Striders at Wimbledon Common

Simon Pannell, from Striders of Croydon, had a very good run to be the first over-55 in the East Surrey League cross-country race at Wimbledon Common on Saturday. He beat all his younger team-mates, and placed 35th overall of the 124 finishers, covering the five-mile course in 32 minutes 23 seconds. Paul Stanford was 56th (35.43), Mick Turner 59th (36.04) and Andy Perks completed the scoring quarter in 68th (36.43).

In the Florence Marathon, Morena Lironi ran very well to finish 46th in the women’s race and set a new club over-40 record of 3 hours 20 minutes 49 seconds. This was almost seven minutes faster than the previous record set by Kerry Backshell in 2009, and also lifts Morena to seventh place in Striders’ all-time club rankings. Meanwhile Simone Luciani placed third in the Kingston 10-kilometre trail race (35.31), while Simon Ambrosi was fourth in the Lloyd parkrun (21.02). Striders had a total of 43 finishers in the various weekly parkruns (19 at Lloyd Park and 24 at other venues).