London Marathon

The 2017 Virgin Money London Marathon featured a relatively small group of Tewkesbury runners. Officially, just three however, the results are incredible: Carol Cowley bopped around the 26.2 mile course in 3 hr 46 mins – not quite her FV65 club record this year though a finish time of the highest standard and scooping her a bronze in her category – an age group 3rd place in a ‘Major’ is world class and arguably Gloucestershire’s finest performance in this year’s London event.

Julie Symonds finished in 4:07 hr; timing her first half split in 1:58, she appeared on target to crack 4hr but the final 8 miles in the marathon is a world of discomfort to say the least. Add a touch of sunshine to the streets of London and thousands of well-trained runners are in the red zone. For those who can recall, Julie recorded an impressive 4:07 hr in last year’s Edinburgh Marathon so to repeat the feat in incredible. She ran a brave race and I'm reliabily informed that today's time was in fact 18 seconds to the good!

The big surprise for some was how well Stuart Coxshall ran. To prove his excellent Gloucester 20m wasn’t a freak incident, he timed 1:42hr over the 13.1 mile mat to dig in for 3:38 hr on The Mall.