The first stadium runners jolly bus outing took place to the west coast of England to take part in the very flat Blackpool Half Marathon and for one crazy member the full marathon. The weather was perfect and this led to a large number of pb's most notably by Rob Buchanan who knocked 25mins off his previous best. Other massive improvements were by Andrea Hyde and Rebecca Smith (who i understand was trying to offload her race entry the week beforehand- strange!).
The race honours weny to Saul who ran strongly to finish in 9th place overall with Jamie Westwood (fine tuning for London) in second place and Martin Hudddleston completing teh top three for Stadium. With 3 runners in teh top 17 places this was good enough for the mens team prize. In the ladies race the impressive Bridgett Hughes was the first home in 1hr 38min (and won her usual age cat prize!), Liz Taylor ran well to second place and a new pb, and Angie Sura was third closely followed home by Laurel Gilbert. By my reckoning this should also be good enough for the ladies team prize!!
Michael Hyde not satisfied with completing at London in two weeks time, decided to run the full marathon as a warm up! Well not only complete his warm up on the lonley promenade of Blackpool he achieved a new Stadium Runners RECORD of 2hrs 51:49mins to finish in 9th place overall! This will certainly give the race in London some added edge in two weeks time.
The remainder of the day was spent re-fueling with large portions of fish n'chips, beer and in the case of one person a humongous sack of potato crisps! The return trip to Huddersfield went smoothly and a repeat of the away trip will certainly be on the cards for 2014. Any race suggestions to be passed to the race director.