Kirk-Smith steals 5th Heathside Record

The very well-organized, popular and scenic Fred Hughes 10 hosted nine Heathsiders over rolling hills in the countryside around St Albans this Sunday. Although not serving as the club road championships this year, the race became both historic for London Heathside and memorable for some of the club’s runners.

Adam Kirk-Smith continued his quest to transform the Heathside record books into his own personally running diary, winning the race in 53:01, almost one and a half minutes faster than the second-place finisher. An impressive final 400m gave Adam another record to add to his collection as he broke the previous 15 year old club record by 24 seconds casting aside Paul Lemmon’s superb effort at Twickenham in 2001 (53:25). Just to rub it, the hilly nature of the course puts into context how impressive Adam’s run was. We look forward to his next record attempts and hopefully he could be the first Heathsider to run under 53 minutes when he next takes on 10 miles.

The remaining Heathside contingent was led by Andrew Hudson (1:13:17), followed shortly by James Felstead ( 1:13:20), Rob Bowler (1:14:32) and Nick de Sausmarez (1:15:31). Edyta had a particularly inspirational run, demolishing her previous PB at the distance by almost 10 minutes, finishing in 1:19:18 and thereby breaking through the 80 minute barrier. She was followed soon after that by Caroline White (1:19:32), who finished 3rd in her age category and Ken Townson (1:22:05), who dramatically, sprinted beyond the finish line towards the ambulance, betore eventually being informed by the Garmin that he had completed the 10 miles. Fortunately, Ken returned safely, and later cross-checking revealed that he had been misinformed for reasons that remain unclear… 

A huge congratulations to Nick Dodd who despite not starting the race as a Heathsider, he ended the day as one. Welcome aboard Nick!

Overall, a great morning was had by all and the Fred Hughes snood was well earned by all. 

Closer to home, other club members took on the relentlessly flat Victoria Park 10km. An unbelievable 933 runners were recorded to have taken on the course. Well done to the 5 Heathsiders who were recorded to have taken on the tides, especially to both Jennifer Wing and Frances Powrie who achieved PBs of 45:32 and 52:51 respectively. Congratulations to all that ran. 

Finally, as usual a huge number of club runners ran parkruns this weekend in locations all over London and what looks like a bit of parkrun Tourism in Northern Ireland as well. Please find the results of all recorded Heathsiders in the following link: http://www.parkrun.com/results/consolidatedclub/?clubNum=2017&eventdate=2016-01-23

Credit to Emilia and Caroline for their contributions.

Fred Hughes 10, St Albans, 24th January 2015

Finish posn Name Chip time

1 ADAM KIRK-SMITH 00:53:01

158 JAMES FELSTEAD 01:13:20

160 ANDREW HUDSON 01:13:17

164th NICK DODD  M50 Male 01:13:30

175 ROBERT BOWLER 01:14:32

188 NICHOLAS DE SAUSMAREZ 01:15:31

208 EMILIA VYNNYCKY 01:15:38

266 EDYTA SZOT 01:19:18

270 CAROLINE WHITE 01:19:32

312 KEN TOWNSON 01:22:05

VICTORIA PARK 10KM

Finish Position Name Chip time.

168Louise Dobbyn44:53

179Joanna Brown43:53 

195Jennifer Wing45:32

403 Kat Maskell51:20

500Frances Powrie52:51