DURSLEY Running Club turned the Frampton 10K on Monday into a big blue experience with a massive 72 entrants.

Nigel Sankey led the team home in 39:45 minutes with the evergreen Kevin Jackson just under two minutes behind and even more evergreen Tony Wooldridge in third.

Kim Bird was the first woman home in 44:11mins, with Molly Wilcox second and Margaret Johnson third for Dursley Running Club.

The guard is starting to change with five of DRC’s top ten senior athletes in the frame as opposed to vets.

In the categories, the veterans are still near the top of the game with Tony Wooldridge (MV65) Alice Lewis (FV55) and Avril Yearsly (FV65) all second in their categories. Dursley had a further five runners in the top ten with Kevin Jackson finishing seventh MV50, Molly Willcox, seventh SenF, Graham Tudor, eighth MV60, Margaret Johnson, ninth FV45 and David Saunders, ninth MV60.

It was a particularly stout effort from Saunders after having some serious dental work carried out at the end of the previous week.

Another 12 Dursley runners made it in to the top ten of their categories with Charlie Strickland placing twentieth senior female in her first race for the club.

Meanwhile, the stand outrun of the week was Brad Johnson’s who travelled to Australia to complete in the Big Red multi-stage Ultra Marathon.

Dreamed up by ultra-runner Greg Donavan and mirroring the format of the Marathon des Sables, runners travel through the Simpson Desert over 6 days, the terrain covering salt lakes, clay flats, sand dunes and gibber plains. The latter being an extensive plain covered with small rocks.

The race covers 250km (156.25 miles) in the six days. This year past winners were invited to return to spice up the competition and this saw the return of Elisabet Barnes 2015 MdS Champion.

Eighty eight competitors, fifty of them women, were on the start line.

The first days saw the sun up and surfaces still hard after some rain. Brad made a good start finishing 5th overall and 3rd man, Barnes had immediately opened up a lead on Hildage, and Dubuois, the later 16 minutes behind in second place.

Overnight rain turned the Big Red green and the clay into very sticky mud, and the temperature dropped down to 10 degrees, this clearly made Brad feel at home as he came in fourth overall and 3rd man.

Day three saw no racing with the weather conditions giving the runners a day off for some personal admin. The rest gave James Kohler a chance to put a marker down on day four’s revised 30km “sprint” stage.

Despite a big effort Kohler only managed to finish just three minute in front of Barnes with Brad fifth overall (4thM). On the last day’s double marathon stage there was a battle royal between Hildage, Dubuois and Barnes. In an effort to wrest second place from Hildage, Dubious set off at a cracking pace, but an 84km double stage was possibly not the place to try this approach and Dubois’ wheels came off with Barnes and Hildage passing him as they completed the half waypoint of the first marathon.

Brad did not get drawn into this battle and came home fourth overall in the race and 3rd man, his first Ultra podium finish. A great result.

The Saturday before had seen Nigel Sankey again leading the club home at Kingsway with the fastest parkrun of the weekend , with Margret Johnson producing a new PB of 22:58 and achieving a very high 73 per cent age grading.

Other PBs on the day were Kevin Higgins, Nicki Cowle, John Hieron plus Oliver Norris and Jack Bevan from the Junior Athletics Programme, with Bevan coming home first JM10. Jadie Cotterell made her debut at Kingsway running a good time of 25:50.

And on Sunday, Rich Pitts took on the Peak District Triathlon.

It was a tough sprint race. 2.5 mile climb on bike and 2.5 k climb on run. Pitts finished 18th in his age group.