What a weekend of racing !

Where shall we start: Saturday saw Dave Tyler take on the Snowdonia Marathon. He was hoping to come in under 3 hours although with London only 4 weeks ago -it was going to be a tough ask. Nonetheless he finished in a fantastic 15th place and a time of 2:58:30: a course PB by 8 minutes. This marathon has an elevation gain of nearly 2500ft, so it isn’t surprising that mile 23 Dave felt quite unwell. An astonishing time on a brutal course. Massive congratulations.

Saturday also saw the second cross country race of the season. Tina Eke – team manager produced the following report:

On an unseasonably hot day at Tonbridge yesterday, 21 club members tackled the challenging cross country course at Somerhill school. Folkestone Juniors were the first to run, with Nico Pedrazas finishing well in 37th place in the Under 13 Boys event. The Clayton twins Emma and Jennifer were next to compete in the Under 15 Girls race, building on their excellent results at Swanley by finishing in 12th and 37th place respectively. In the Vet 70 mens race Grahame Eke was joined by Malcolm Gibbs who had a fine start to his season by finishing in 8th place with Grahame in 14th.

Joe Bruce debuted in the Under 17 mens race with a brilliant 5th place.

In the Senior Womens race, Jodie Stoakes had a great return to cross country running as the first Folkestone women home in 49th place. Next to finish was Emily Chambers, 59th, followed by Caroline Curtis 82nd, Jane Wren, 94th, Diane Parsons, 100th and Sylwia Tokarska 109th. The team of three finished in 12th place on the day and are currently in 12th place in the League after two races. The team of six finished in 9th place and are also in 9th place in the League.

There was some great competitive running in the Senior Mens race with Stephen Male reinforcing his position as the top Vet 50 in the competition by finishing as the first Vet 50 again yesterday and 38th overall in the race. There was a closely fought competition between Krzysztof Klidzia and Andy Wright who finished in 50th and 55th place respectively. Krzysztof was third Vet 50. Rob Collier was the next to finish in 79th place followed by Tristan Bruce, 113th, Darren Crew, 142nd, Nick Steele, 156th, Dave Smyth, 214th and Alan Randall, 236th. The mens team of four finished in 9thplace yesterday and are currently 9th in the League. Well done to everyone!

On another hilly course Jenny Quinn and her dog Banjo completed the Bedgebury Canicross 5km finishing in a pb time for the both of them of 29:00. They came 19th overall out of 54 and 2nd Vet 40. Karla Larnder also took part finishing 9th overall with her dog Jasper in his first canicross event in 25:10 and coming home 1st Vet 45.

During the week Greg Dixon took part in a race in Sangatte France . This was the Douane National Cross-country championships He finished 2nd in his age category in 51:18 and in 44th place with his team finishing in 5th place overall.

Sunday saw the Frankfurt Marathon take place. Paul Barlett and Catherine O’ Connor represented the club and did magnificently well. Paul finished in 3:05:09 and Catherine in 3:44:18 smashing her GFA time from last year by 5 minutes.


At the Ashford and District Halloween 10 mile run Jason Herridge achieved a pb run in 1:28:19. A brilliant result.

This week’s parkrun results are as follows: FOLKESTONE: Phil HOYLAND 00:18:58 Andrew FLETCHER 00:19:18 Daren WILD 00:19:52 Chris ADDISON 00:21:34 Linnaea STOCKALL 00:22:28 Kevin WHITBY 00:22:33 Jacob HENWOOD 00:22:35 Darren PHILIP 00:22:41 Vicky SCOTT 00:22:45 Deborah JEFFERY 00:23:14 Ron BELL 00:23:22 Caroline CURTIS 00:23:27 Rob HILL 00:24:40 David BOTTING 00:24:49 Andrew SMITH 00:25:12 Stuart ERSKINE 00:25:29 Deirdre COOMBS 00:26:25 Kirsty WILSON 00:26:46 Rebekah NEWTON 00:27:14 David GILLETT 00:27:29 Richard DYER 00:27:58 Marie BRAZIER 00:28:20 Trudi CURD 00:28:56 Jacob BURVILL 00:29:33 Gary BRAZIER 00:29:35 Simon BURVILL 00:29:36 Anh-Van WHITBY 00:30:43 Collette WINDSOR 00:31:40 Denise KING 00:31:52 Nikki GOODWIN 00:35:38 Ellen HILLS 00:37:22 Elizabeth TEW 00:51:27 Jody STOAKES 00:59:59 Darren CREW 01:00:01 ALBERT PARK MELBOURNE: Henry AXON 00:18:08 Amy OWEN 00:28:57 WHITSTABLE: Will JARVIS 00:22:18 TOOTING COMMON: Kate LANCEFIELD 00:30:43 Emily LANCEFIELD 00:42:54 BEDGEBURY: Karla LARNDER 00:24:21 Philip HEATHFIELD 00:26:15 DEAL AND WALMER: Daniel VOLLER 00:18:30 Ian MERRICK 00:18:36