Thornbury Running Club

EIGHTY-TWO miles of running in 24 hours? Who else but Thornbury’s Rob Hopkins would take on the challenge.

It is said that the Oner (pronounced one-er) race was born when a competitor contacted the organisers of a three-marathons-in-three-days event to say he couldn’t get time off for three days.

Could he do it as a ‘oner’? This has become an annual race, over Dorset’s Jurassic coastline from Charmouth to Studland including the Isle of Portland with more than 10,000 feet of ascent.

Thanks to competitors wearing a live tracker with the results uploaded through each of 11 checkpoints, Hopkins’ progress was closely monitored by a lot of other club members, many of whom would have liked to have been there with him.

Hopkins started steadily then began to pick off runners, moving up to 20th place until beginning to slip back slightly.

He completed the event in 26th place in 22 hours 13.39 minutes – an incredible achievement.

The club’s parkrunners were all over the place at the weekend. Andi Davies found himself at Halifax where he finished the 5k in 18.41 minutes; below his best, but quick enough to be the first person across the line by over half a minute.

Son Luke, running at Aberystwyth for Brecon AC, was also first to finish his run, yet again beating his dad’s time in 17.25 minutes, while Mum Nicky, also at Aberystwyth, was a bit further down the field in 24.19 minutes.

Closer to home, Thornbury athletes were at the Little Stoke parkrun, which has been in the national news headlines this week as the local council look to impose a fee for runners to take part.

Last week, Chris Dawes ran 20.51 minutes around Little Stoke, with Kevin Arnold 22:18 and Becky Griffin 28:38, while at Chipping Sodbury David Palmer ran 26.34 minutes with wife Anne 31:35.

If there is little doubt that park running is very popular among athletes, it was shown as Sodbury celebrated having 289 finishers – a new record – while last week a total of 81,595 people completed a parkrun.

l Nick Langridge makes a point of taking part in the Chedworth Roman Trail 10-mile race whenever he can.

Being mostly off-road, this is quite a tough run. But he was quicker than last time, finishing in one hour 22.59 minutes in 92nd place. Dave Flemington was 255th in one hour 51.43 minutes.

Thornbury Running club is not just about running, and a good number including families and friends met on Saturday evening for a quiz night where questions covered literature, travel and general knowledge as well as sport.

Entries are now open for the Thornbury 10k, which will be held at 7.30pm on Thursday, July 14. It is ideal for the serious club runner as well as those tackling the distance for the first time. Details of this and other club activities can be found at thornburyrunningclub.co.uk.