Last weekend Pete Mackrell went off on his own to darkest Oxfordshire to take part in the Abingdon marathon. Having been thrawted by injury when runing very well last year, he has kep this plans pretty quiet, but has put in a couple of reasonable performances in the last few weeks.

On what was a cool, dry day with practically no wind, the 9am start was perfect for marathon running and with Pete's eyes firmly fixed on beating Joby's leading marathon time of the year he set off at a good pace. He was hoping that if he didn't slow too much in the second half, he even had a chance of sneaking under 3 hours on the flat rural course. read more

On Sunday, despite having played a very active part in the start of the cross-country season a couple of LBAC runners decided that one race a weekend wasn't enough.

First up, Jane Sauer took on the Herts 10K, which takes place in St Albans in aid of the Grove House charity. Following three weeks without running at all and a bit of a bug this week, she completed the course in 52.51 and was very pleased but unsurprsingly finished with aching legs.

Gary Stratford was the other hard core athlete who clearly felt that the hills of Oxfordshire weren't enough. He therefore made the short trip over to Tring to do the Ridgeway run. This consists of approximately nine miles of off-road running across the Ridgeway, South of Tring and includes a number of "challenging" hills! Gary managed to complete the course in seventy minutes and finished 45^th out of 474 people, with a pretty good effort for the second day running. Roger Seldon was four minutes behind Gary to finish in seventy-four minutes. read more

The new winter season got under way this weekend with the big first fixture of the Chiltern Cross-country League at Shotover Hill in Oxford. The first thing that has to be said is a huge thanks and congratulations to every one of the 34 runners who made it over to the event to support the club and do their bit. There were some great runs generally, but what stood out overall was what huge difference it made to have such a strong team effort.

The first runners out on the course were the U11's and Mathilde Sammons was the club's only representative, in what was her first race in the league. She put in a great effort to finish in 55^th position and then stayed for the whole day with her Dad Mark, to support all of the other races which was greatly appreciated. Exactly the same applies to Izzy Bidlake-Hull who ran in the U13 girls and finished in 65^th position and gained valuable points in our bid to stay in division one for the first time in many years. read more

The new Stag Trophy season started with a bang last night, with thirty club members completing the three lap course from Parson's Close. It seems that gone are the days where you only had to turn up on a chilly night to pick up fifteen points, and it is great to see. There were seven PB's run on the night, as well as seven other people running the event for the first time. All these times have now been plugged in to the historical records available on the Stag Trophy page and so each individual can set their own targets for next month. read more

Jon Hull & Gary Buckle, the intrepid travellers managed to resist the nightlife of Cologne on the Friday night – well almost… The local brew 'Kolsch' is a well known hydration tool for long distance runners in Germany. In addition, we discovered that the European ban on smoking doesn't quite extend to bars in Cologne (another story).

On Sunday we lined up in Koln Messe for a 'flat and fast marathon' clearly something they did not mention to me and Gary. On the 20th anniversary of German reunification, we all joined in with the German National anthem and choruses of Viva Colonia to set us on our way. read more