Cambridge and Coleridge A.C received some big news last week! The London Marathon organisers take a while to scour through all the provisional results, look at finish line video tapes, and check starting lists, before finally releasing confirmed results. When they did, it turned out that C&C were England Marathon Champions for 2024!
The results are based on “3 to count”. Our first 3 home were; Dom Jones – 2:19.10, Will Mycroft – 2:21.48, and Chris Darling – 2:22.49. They were supported Norman Shreeve – 2:24.29 and Ben Leaman – 2:25.37, so in effect the club had a whole squad backing each other up, and pushing each other on.
What an achievement and honour this is for the club! The competition for the National title could not be greater, every club sends top runners to the London Marathon.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this amazing success!
In 1975, club legend, Graham Tuck, ran a marathon time of 2:19.55. This stood as a club record for 46 years before Norman Shreeve finally beat it by running 2:16.55 in 2021. Graham’s time is now 4th on the club’s all-time marathon list, this is a real indicator of C&C marathon progression in recent years.
Winning this title is a real moment of pride, but never complacency. They say that titles are harder to defend, than win in the first place, so let’s keep working!
Here’s another astonishing achievement on the distance running front – Chris Kelly won the Grand Union Canal race – 145 miles from London to Birmingham. His time was 24 hours and 2 minutes, the 4th fastest time ever run on the course, and in far from favourable conditions. Well done Chris, a truly amazing performance!
Congratulations to the many, many C&C medal winners at the Cambridgeshire County Championships (see report on website). Well done as well to all the officials, who enabled it to be a great day for all involved.
A fine team effort was made at the first SAL meeting of the season at Stevenage. There were great commitments to grab every point possible, with many doing multiple events just to pinch that extra bonus for the team. This is what we need to do. We worked so hard to get that promotion last year, we must fight to at least maintain our new elevated position this year. A reminder of how vital every point is came in the final match result, we were 4th, but just one point off 3rd. 4th is a solid result, but 3rd would have been a fantastic start at this level. So close! Well done to everyone who took part. We had some really fine results, in some events winning the maximum 12 points.
The next SAL match is at Thurrock on 15th June. Let’s aim for an even better performance there.
Also coming up very soon is the next EYAL match on Sunday 2nd June at Cambridge, and the 2nd EMAC match of the season, at King’s Lynn on Wednesday 5th June. Please compete if you can, that’s what we train for, and we need to fill those teams. Don’t hide your talents!
Talking of talented people, Wing Wong, whose doing a fantastic job for the club on Web Admin., has asked for the following message to be put out,
“Attention all club members! We want to breathe new life into the club’s Instagram account and we are looking for anyone who is interested in lending a hand to join our team. Ideally we want to share content, highlight achievements, and showcase experiences from across all our groups, so the more diverse team we can build, the better.”
If you are interested, then please contact Wing on:
[email protected]
Thank you.
Finally, I started this post with achievements to be proud of, and I want to end with another. In the recently held, 149th annual Varsity match, two members of C&C’s Disability Group took part. This is the first time that this has happened in all those years, and C&C athletes were at the heart of it! Pushing back the barriers, making history, and having fun while doing so. Amazing!
Please see the full report about this on the website.
Have a fantastic June! Keep creating history, keep making memories!