Milford 21

Most people would have been safely indoors last Sunday avoiding the  wet
weather and strong winds. Newport and District Running Club members  are
made of sterner stuff however, and three of them continued their  push
towards the London Marathon next month by running the Milford 21  over the
off road course on Cannock Chase.
In conditions which  could only be described as awful, the 180 participants
had to negotiate  a shallow river as well as several climbs and an
abundance of mud. This  made the going rather difficult and quite slippery
in  places.
Lindsay Ferguson had a good run and kept going right through  the race to
finally finish 98th in a time of 3h 15m 43s. A little way  ahead of her was
Ian Atkinson who finished 70th in what he says was a  comfortable race, but
still managed the very respectable time of 3h 01m  44s.
Club honours on the day went to Sandy Mackenzie, who seems to be  improving
week by week in his preparation for the London Marathon. He  had an
excellent run in the conditions to cross the line in 2h 48m 57s  in 41st
position overall.

At the same time Mark  Deighton went to the Wyre Forest in Worcestershire
for an eight mile  off road race. Conditions were no better in this part of
the country as  over 200 runners set off from the Forestry Visitor Centre.
After a  short time the race left the main forestry track and the course
turned  to almost knee deep mud which slowed everyone down considerably.
This  combined with very slippery conditions when running up or down made
it  very difficult and more than one runner lost their footing as  they
pressed on towards the finish.
Mark refused to be beaten  by the conditions and ran on to be rewarded with
a finishing time of  63m 08s and 43rd position overall as well as 3rd in
his age  group.

Mark Deighton Newport and District Running  Club