Doncaster 10K

On Sunday 24th November four members of Grantham Running Club made the journey up the A1 to ‘Donny’ for the third running of the Doncaster 10K. 

Voted the best 10K in Yorkshire by the Running Awards for the past two years, the race starts at the racecourse taking runners through the town centre on fully closed roads before heading back past the start to a hairpin turn, leaving a downhill straight to the finish back in the racecourse.

Before the race commenced there was a minute’s silence for local runner Ken Chapman, who sadly passed away just a few days prior to the event he was due to take part in.

First home for GRC was Sam Dodwell. As a runner affected by October's Leeds Abbey Dash being declared short a couple of days after the Doncaster race, he was probably one of the few not overly lamenting the loss of an official personal best as he managed to match his 43:15 clocking back in Leeds on the streets of Doncaster. Perhaps his only disappointment is that his original declared finish time of 43:14 was rounded up to 43:15 thanks to the rules regarding road races that are timed to tenths and hundredths of a second. Nevertheless his time was a 38 second improvement on his previous ‘legitimate’ 10K best at the Summer Solstice.

Next to finish was Stewart Pick who ran well to finish in 44:28, a seventeen second improvement on his previous best over 10K, also set at the 2019 Summer Solstice. Stewart was closely followed by Kevin Kettle in 45:09, only 25 seconds shy of his best 10K time this year set at Lincoln, with Nicola Cottam completing the GRC quartet in 52:20 after a busy few weeks of racing with a marathon and a ten mile race under her belt. 

Befitting of the location of the race, all finishers received a horse racing themed medal as well as a pork pie for their efforts.

The race was won by Nick Martin of Caistor RC in 31:27 and the first female Jenny Blizard of Rotheram Harriers and AC in 36:07. There were 2514 finishers.