Race Report by Gareth:
Sunday saw another mega turnout of 19 Lostockers taking part in the 5th instalment of this year’s road champs, the Chorley 10K.
This belter of a town centre 10K has gone from strength to strength in recent years and this year’s iteration brought another sellout, 3000 runners across the 2K & 10K, with 1666 finishers in the 10K, just incredible. The crowd support is awesome and it really gives you a big event feel.
The race is a two-lap course with plenty of ups and downs which goes from Market Street to St Thomas’s Road, along Southport Road, a very fast first mile downhill, before turning right into Ackhurst Lodge and then entering Astley Park.
We then pass run over the lake bridge, past the playing fields and play areas and slog uphill towards Astley Park’s main gates where we turned left on to Park Road with more uphill slog (a bit gentler this time)up to the junction with the A6 Preston Road where we turn back on ourselves and travel back down Park Road and pass Chorley Town Hall, before turning right into St Thomas’s Road and repeat! I always love the out and back section of this course as it’s a great way to spot and cheer on your club mates.
Starting on the dot at 10:30 by Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle this year’s race saw more brilliant running from the green army & some truly stand out performances.
As usual too many to mention everyone individually…First back for Lostock and a terrific 45th place overall was speedster Paul Edwards in just over 40 minutes. Young whipper snappers Antony, Gaz & Andy K were hot on his heels and looked super strong on the run to the finish. Big shout outs to Johanna who put in a tremendous performance to be 2nd FV40 & Brian who despite suffering from a chest infection finished 5th MV65 in an excellent time. Mike was another one suffering on the day but did so well to get round in well under the hour mark even with a crazy heart rate. It was also fantastic to see Joanna in her first 10K for a while to do so well and demonstrate the value of the Lostock C25K program! Well done Jo 👏👏👏.
I think most will agree though the star performer of the day was young Luke who broke the 50 minute barrier for the first time, no mean achievement at 15 years old! I had first hand experience of this as we kept passing each other throughout the race & to see him storming past me towards the end was wonderful. Absolutely buzzing for him 💚🖤, plenty more to come.
Huge thanks for the on course support and photography courtesy of Andy, Greg, Heather & Buddy, Emma & Orla, Deb, Leo & Eric. It’s really appreciated 💚🖤.
Well done everyone on a great morning 👊👊.
I’ll leave you with a pro tip…make sure your gel wrapper is empty before you put it in your pocket, it can be very painful undressing when the leftover gel leeks a bit and sticks to everything “downstairs” 🤣🤣😩😩.
