With the promise of an Easter Egg to all runners courtesy of Lord Chairman Joe, 13 club members lined up for the annual Easter 10 in Maidenhead. For those who have never run this event it is one of those races that I would compare to our Valentines 10K, the organisation is pretty slick (ignoring the year the lead bike went the wrong way) the marshals are super friendly and encouraging and the course is excellent for spectators. Best of all there is a pub not more than 5 minutes down the road that do some of the best pub burgers you’re ever likely to have.
The Maidenhead 10 starts and finishes in a business park adjacent to White Waltham Airfield home to the West London Aero Club, the largest flying club in the UK which would explain the light aircraft buzzing around overhead performing loop the loops. From the start the course takes in a full lap of the business park, heads out towards the Bath Road and back for another lap of the park before heading out through the countryside on the big lap, this means you’ve actually covered 4 miles before you head away from the business park meaning spectators don’t have long to wait before runners start to reappear after the last runners have left the park. This also means that because a lot of the course is within the park, across fields or down very quiet country lanes the course for the most part is traffic free which is always a plus.
As stated the marshals on this course are really good and regularly spaced out even standing in places you would expect to see a marshal. Accordingly Nelly the reason for this is that the marshals can see every part of the course so should someone require assistance it can be on hand pretty quickly.
So 14 of us ran and earned ourselves a rather nice Easter Egg which seemed to go down really well and with the exception of Moustafa and Chris everyone appeared to have a really good run. For some unknown reason Moustafa appeared at the back of the field on the return from the Bath Road but his gun time suggest he started pretty much on time. Chris Wilson after all the hype of the Chang V’s Wilson showdown appeared to start well but then went on to finish behind me which confused me somewhat as I certainly didn’t recall passing him at any point. I think perhaps the rather urgent call of nature was to blame for this but at least he managed to finish the race.
Gun Pos | Gun Time | Chip Time | |
1 | Phil Wicks | 0:49:01 | 0:49:01 |
74 | Joe Chang | 1:05:03 | 1:04:59 |
80 |
Steve Ramek | 1:05:12 |
1:04:59 |
151 |
David Pimm | 1:09:03 |
1:08:53 |
165 | Stephen Blakeney | 1:09:56 | 1:09:43 |
192 | Peter May | 1:11:31 | 1:11:19 |
272 | Katherine Franklin | 1:15:09 | 1:14:56 |
315 | Matthew Pritchard | 1:16:59 | 1:16:31 |
390 | Moustafa Fawzy | 1:20:29 | 1:19:58 |
463 | Kevin Stone | 1:23:47 | 1:23:20 |
556 | Chris Wilson | 1:27:18 | 1:27:09 |
586 | Andrea Bennett | 1:28:49 | 1:28:22 |
642 | Peter Tozer | 1:31:30 | 1:31:05 |
746 | Neil Sunderland | 1:38:02 | 1:37:34 |
751 | Derick Wilkie | 1:38:21 | 1:37:37 |
867 | Kate Booth | 2:15:04 | 2:14:11 |
A big thank you to Jacq and Joe for the Easter Eggs, those who turned out to support and also to Danny Norman for making the 10 miles worthwhile to see the look on his face when he was presented with his tiny Easter Egg for spectators, I don’t think I can even recall my kids bottom lips quivering as much as his did when he saw how small it was compared to the runners Eggs although this was soon replaced by a huge grin when he was given a bigger Egg once all the runners had got theirs.