DURSLEY Running Club ace Dan Anderson has been supreme in the Ultra Marathon and other off-road races in his time and was at it again when he won the Cribyn Fell Race in the Brecon Beacons last Saturday.

Anderson has run all over the world and competed at some of the most scenic places imaginable. So a trip across the Severn Bridge to Wales was another good challenge for the Dursley RC member.

The organisers state that the race is a classic of the Brecon Beacons

The race is approximately 5.5 miles in length and has a profile of 3,100 feet of ascent.

Anderson’s assessment was that he ‘executed the race perfectly running conservatively throughout’.

He was third at the top of the first climb around twenty to thirty seconds behind the leaders.

Then, by the top of Cribyn he was second and had cut the deficit by around half.

And, by the top of notorious Pen-y-Fan Mountain, the highest peak in South Wales, the robust Anderson had moved into a ten-second lead over the rest of the field.

He maintained this lead down the technical descent, allowing him to cruise in over the last two miles to finish first in a time of 59 minutes 13 seconds.

Anderson was relatively pleased with the result on the basis that it was training race to identifysome areas of improvement for his races later in the season.

Also last Saturday, four new members of the club – Paula Mellerup, Sally Williams, Emily Mann and Kath Redmond fresh from the Dursley Walk2Run programme – were back out at the Chipping Sodbury parkrun, where they were joined by another four club runners in Liz Anderson, Nicola Evered, Nicola Cowle and Karen Eaden.

It was personal bests all round with the club being led home by Anderson, who was fifth woman overall and fourth senior woman, Dursley yet again showed their strength across the age categories with three fourths, a fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth.

Results: Liz Anderson 35th (5h, 4h SW) 23:31PB; Paula Mellerup , 71st (4th Fv40-4) 26:28 PB; Nicola Evered, 106th (5th FV 50-54) 28:16 PB,: Sally Williams, 135th 30:45 PB; Emily Mann, 136th (4th Fv 35-39) 30:50 PB; Nicola Cowle, 149th 6th Fv 35-39) 31:39; Karen Eadon, 155th (8th Fv45-49) 32:31; Kath Redmond, 156th (7th FV 35-39) 32:33 PB,

Dave Saunders and Jan Short were to be found at the Angel’s 10K on Sunday the 19th. The event is the third event in the Glos AAA Road Race Series. Starting and finishing at the Woodpeckers Cricket Club in Ashleworth and there were 135 starters. The course is described as undulating with the first kilometre all downhill. Saunders reached this stage in 00:04:01, which gave him in his own words ‘false optimism for the rest of the race’.

A very steep uphill between four and 5k coupled with a strong cold easterly wind meant it wasn’t a day for a personal best after all. Saunders could not have done any better in terms of the Race Series placing first, with Jan Short second in her category.