The East Coast Classic 10k

Stuart, Robert, Diana, Rob and Simon

Five athletes from Grantham Running Club made the trip to Mablethorpe to take part in this year’s East Coast Classic 10k race along the promenade. Although this is nominally a fast flat race being on the seafront means it is more susceptible to the weather than inland events. Sunday’s challenges were, unusually for this coast, a strong headwind on the outward half rather than the return and a thick covering of sand on several sections of the course. This popular race which sells out early every year starts outside the lifeboat station on Mablethorpe’s prom and follows a route along the seafront past Sutton-on-sea and reaches Sandilands. This is where they turn and follow the same route back to the finish outside the lifeboat station.

Rob picks up his prize

The performance of the day was from GRC’s Diana McDonald  (64:32) who set a Personal Best time slicing almost five and a half minutes off her previous 10k time set of the much faster Solstice course in June. Diana, a graduate of one of the club’s new runner programmes put the massive improvement down to running regularly with her new teammates.

Also running well was Rob Howbrook in his third race in eight days despite being in the Super Veteran category. Rob played his joker in the GRC championship for this outing and was rewarded with a score of over 80% as well as winning the trophy for being first in his age category with a time of 41:28. Next home was Robert McArdle, also running his third race in eight days with a steady 46:20 as he continued his build up to an autumn marathon.

Stuart Baty was satisfied with his time of 50:22, not his best this year but considering how much last week’s Grantham Half Marathon took out of him in the heat he was hoping rather than expecting to go sub 50 and probably would have if the wind had dropped. The final runner for the club was Simon Hartley, Simon opted to pull out of last week’s race to prevent further damage to his ankle but was able to give it a tentative outing on the previous day’s parkrun and decided to give the East Coast Classic a go with the goal being to finish it. With the ankle strapped he was able to force his way through the headwind to the turn on target, it was only when he rounded the traffic cone he discovered that although the wind was making going tough once it was behind you it starts to get a lot hotter! Despite this Simon was able to keep it going and finish in a respectable 65:47

Position	Time	Name		Category		Grading	Ranking
23	41:28	Rob Howbrook		MV60	SB	80.51%	109
54	46:20	Robert McArdle		MV55		71.43%	788
86	50:22	Stuart Baty		MV45		59.51%	N/A
204	64:32	Diana McDonald		FSEN	PB	47.12%	N/A
210	65:47	Simon Hartley		MV50		46.66%	N/A