Race report by Gareth:
A whopping turnout of 25 Lostockers out of a field of 126 once more headed to Chorley for the first of this years Astley Park race series.
Seeing as we do this race 3 times a year (for the last 3 years) I won’t go into too much detail on the course description lol. Suffice to say it’s in Astley Park, it’s a weird distance (3.7 miles), it’s a lovely route of woods, trail, tarmac, gravel with a bit of up & down with 250ft of elevation.
Last night’s race was a belter with some epic Lostock performances & duels between club mates. Club speedster Paul Edwards ran a blinder to come 5th overall & be 1st MV40, a monumental achievement in such a high caliber field, well done Paul 💪💪👊👊, we also had another age cat winner in Nikki who was 1st MV60, outstanding performance Nikki 👏👏👏👏. The lean, green racing machine that is Tony Marlow continued his excellent form to be 2nd Lostocker home & 3rd MV60 (how you didn’t win your category with that time I’ll never know!)
Further down the field the outstanding performances continued & the duels really began in earnest. Philip, Gaz & Greg duked it out in fine style throughout with Phil putting the afterburners on towards the end & Gaz pipping Greg in a Chariots of Fire style finish! Chris caried on his excellent form with another course PB & Andy K is getting back to his best post his first marathon with a strong run. Club newcomer John H is another one to keep an eye on & stormed round in style (he makes it look easy lol) in just his second outing in club colours.
Johanna cruised round to be 4th FV40 & a bit further back Matt, Brian, Mike, myself, Andy & Heather all slugged it out to finish within 90 seconds of each other. Matt continues to look stronger & stronger with each race and picked us all off comfortably (well, he made it look comfortable!), Brian ran a super strong 2nd half of the race & kicked on from me with a mile to go & Mike had my “encouragement” ringing in his ears throughout the last section to come home strongly. Heather was trying to sneak up on Andy on the run to the finish until Paul gave her away & he found an extra kick to see her off 😆.
George continues to improve (and talk incessantly about marathons 😝) and ran another belter of a race before the next lot of Lostockers to finish close together with Terri, Rachel, Jenna & Lee all finishing with purpose & big smiles. Emma continued her post marathon recovery with a top race & looked strong at the finish, Ian marked his first race of the season with his usual consistency & Gillian backed up well from Chorley 10K on Sunday and stormed up the final hill.
Big shout out to Deb who swapped cheer leading & taking pics to put in an excellent run in a field of really competitive club runners, another one to come through the Lostock C25K with flying colours.
Here are the results, well done everyone on a great night.
https://www.ukresults.net/2026/astley1.html
