The weekend saw 14 roadrunners taking on challenges of varying lengths.
COLCHESTER FRIDAY NIGHT 5K
Friday night bought us a 5k race at Northern Gateway in Colchester. This race was also part of the Essex County Championship series. An ideal venue to chase a fast time as the course is traffic-free, pancake flat and on smooth tarmac. 5k races are few and far between so this was a popular event with 340 athletes taking part. HRR had a good turnout.
Coming back from injury Reece Hearn finished in an incredible time of 00:18.30.
Joe slee took 1 minute 35 seconds off his time from last year  finishing with a new PB of 00:18.56.
Rachel Rising was our first lady in 00:19.00.
Hayley Lamkin was pleased with her run and finished in 00:19.15.
Stephen Metson finished in 00:19.22.
Next was Karen Pickering in 00:20.02.
Not far behind was James North who was thrilled to finish with a new PB of 00:20.05.
Sam Wolton finished in 00:21.14.
Charlotte king ran well finishing in 00:24.13.
Noush Springett was hot on her heels in 00:24.58.
Taking an impressive 2 minutes 51 seconds off her 5k time was Jenny Smith finishing with a new PB of 00:27.31.
PARKRUN
HRR are big fans of Parkrun and one of our newest members completed their 100th milestone on Saturday, along with his grandson who was running his first ever Parkrun. Well done to Lee Prowse and his little running buddy.
SVP
The Stour Valley Path is a 100km (62 mile) long footpath in England, which starts in Newmarket (Suffolk) and ends in Cattawade, a village near Manningtree (Essex). The SVP100 covers almost the entire length of the well marked trail, and is one of the longest point to point races in East Anglia. Megan Hollinshead took on the 50k race starting in Sudbury. This was Megan’s first ultra and she trained hard for the event and has been raising money for the charity SESAW. Megan struggled with the middle 10 miles finding it tough but got through it and finished feeling strong and smiling. Her active run time was 7:34.39. It was such a huge mental and physical challenge, and what a fantastic achievement for Megan. The best bit of all was that she raised over £800 for her chosen charity.  A massive well done from all at HRR.
Taking on a different role in the SVP 100 was Halstead’s Darren Powell. Having done SVP 50 before but deciding he wasn’t fit enough this year, Darren didn’t sign up. But when he saw a plea for volunteers he offered to run the first 37 miles of SVP100 as a sweeper. He covered the 37 miles with  fellow long distance runner Justin and handed over to the next sweepers at Sudbury Mill Hotel. This was Darren’s longest run to date at 37.5 miles, a very impressive distance so big well done to Darren.
On Saturday Darren and Megan covered the whole of the SVP between them. HRR went the full 100k.