Manchester Marathon

Two runners from Striders of Croydon ran well to win their respective age groups in the East Surrey League, which published its final league tables this week. Tatsuya Okamoto won the men’s over-40 championship, while Daniel Finch won the boys’ under-15 championship. Striders’ men’s team finished the season in third place.

On Sunday, Tatsuya Okamoto ran well to complete the Rotterdam Marathon in 2 hours 48 minutes 40 seconds, placing 595th in a large field.

On the same day, Striders had four finishers in the Manchester Marathon. They were led by Karen McNulty who finished in 3 hours 20 minutes 01. She was followed by Michael Davis who ran 3 hours 48 minutes 01. There were personal bests for Stephen Siu (3:56:50) and Anna O’Sullivan (3:58:12).

In the Norman Fowler Memorial Meeting at Tonbridge on Monday, James Rhodes placed fifth in the A 600 metres, recording 1 minute 37.28.

On Saturday morning, Ellyw Evans was the eighth woman to finish the RunThrough 10-kiloometre road race at Battersea Park. She placed 68th overall out of 476 finishers, and her time of 43 minutes 07 lifted her to 19th place in Striders’ all-time women’s rankings.

Also on Saturday, Striders had 92 finishers in the various weekly parkruns. Peter Johnson was first out of 32 finishers at the Treviso parkrun in Italy, recording 21 minutes 16. There were second places for Lee Flanagan in the Lloyd parkrun (19:39) and Martin Filer in the Riddlesdown parkrun (20:29). Consuelo Kennefick was the second woman to finish the Riddlesdown parkrun, placing eleventh overall (24:26). James Rhodes was fourth in the South Norwood parkrun (19:30). Striders’ fastest time of the day came from Jay Lidbetter, who was ninth in the Dulwich parkrun (16:29).