Cardiff Half Marathon

Cardiff Half Marathon featured a sizeable bunch from Tewkesbury.

Several big performances from Mike Younger’s Monday night gang and perhaps the most impressive was Mark Parker’s race. Mark even bettered his Cheltenham time the previous week by crossing the line in 1:33. Safe to say Mark is still finding his feet with racing and he’s on solid ground already with the Stroud Half Marathon in his sights next.

On target in the Welsh capital and finally scooping a PB, Natalie Jenks; to her relief, Natalie planned and played a fine race to record 1:38 against her name.

Not too dissimilar to marathon running, lady luck needs to be on your side and some of the Tewkesbury runners had ‘off days’. Jon Rawlings’s race came undone after a promising start and was forced to suffer over the later stages for 1:48 so it was left to Stuart Dudfield to lead TRC back to the finish zone with 1:36 (Mark started in the 1.45-2.00 hour pen so he came in a minute later).

Kerri Dyer was the pick of four girls who finished around 1:55, like Jenksey, Kerri was due some better luck on race day. Julie Symonds, Cathy Dudfield and Carly Merriman completed the 175 minute quartet – all within 40 seconds of each other – incredible and it’s probably never happened before that four TRC runners finish so tightly in a HM.

Jay Russell finished just after Sharon Peters as they both made ground on Jon.

Sheena Moseley and Samantha Robinson crossed the line outside 2hrs – looking through their race splits, they both appear to have nailed it with style and can boast their second capital city race of 2016.

Mark Parker