Thank you to Jon Lawrence for this write up of the Greater Manchester Marathon. Great running, Jon!
This was the first of the Spring marathons that many of the club had been training for throughout the winter, with Brighton, Paris and London to follow. Five of the club headed North for the Manchester marathon that is advertised as a fast flat PB course.
The day itself didn’t disappoint on the weather front with plenty of sunshine and blues skies on offer. The Manchester marathon is a smaller event with about 8500 runners. After years of mixed press about the event due to the course being measured short and baggage issues, we were curious to see whether lessons had been learnt.
The event itself starts near Old Trafford and then heads out to Sale and Altrincham before heading back via Carrington and Urmston. It’s a really friendly event and well supported throughout. As advertised it is a nice flat course and ideal for anyone searching for that PB. The event was well organized and Manchester is obviously learning from previous mishaps. The baggage areas were well run and easy to follow and facilities were very good.
The club itself achieved some amazing results on the day with Chris Peck leading the team home in an incredible time of 2hrs 42 mins and 58 seconds, giving him 56th place overall. There were PB’s for John McKenna who broke his previous PB by an amazing 39 mins, and for Jon Lawrence, and some great performances by JP Pritchard and Zophanie Howard. The Waverley Harriers team did a great job overall on the day and it was a great start to the Spring marathon season.
Sadly, with different finishing times we didn’t get a complete team photo although Jon and JP captured their own.
