Basingstoke and River Thames Half Marathon, and Reading O2O 10k, and Dusk 'till Dawn 2014 now live

Possibly the last of the sunny weekends ( but I've been saying that for the last month), with a slightly colder chill in the air than previously made it perfect conditions (apparently that's between 14C and 18C) for fast times at all the races on Sunday...

Good news !
Apart from it now being dark at Sunday awake o'clock, there was a nice surprise to discover that the Major A23 road widening at Handcross that has been going on for over three years (it started in October 2011!!!) - is now completed northbound, and that at 6am they had opened it back up.
It is difficult to describe just how nice this made that bit of the journey for my usual Sunday race trip, although the 40mph speedlimit had worked really very well for the past 2 years, I'm betting the Monday commuters had a fantastic surprise this morning.

Full details here http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/road-projects/a23-handcross-to-warninglid/ since it started in 2005 at the initial tender, it has been a long road in more ways than one...

It was a busy weekend for us, with 5 races on the Sunday, with the autumn race season reaching it's crescendo next weekend with 6 races for us (and having turned down three others on that day, well if the race directors will phone up during the busy season with two weeks to go...), it's the peak season - so get your entries in early....

Right, most of the weekends galleries are now online - we have Clarendon and the Warrior to work through now which is heads down in the office tomorrow for everyone... wish us luck !

Race logo	Race Gallery link
	Basingstoke Half Marathon 2014 http://bit.ly/Basingstoke-Half-2014-Race-Gallery
	River Thames Half Marathon http://bit.ly/River-Thames-Half-2014-Race-Gallery
	Purple Patch Reading O2O 10k http://bit.ly/Reading-O2O-10k-2014-Race-Gallery
	Dusk 'till Dawn 2014 http://bit.ly/D2D-photo-gallery-2014
	Coming Soon - The Clarendon Marathon and Half Marathon http://bit.ly/Clarendon-Marathon-2014-Race-Gallery
	Coming soon - The Warrior Run http://bit.ly/Warrior-Run-Race-2-2014-Photo-Gallery

In other news - if you enjoy this blog, then give us a vote in the Running Awards nominations here:  Online - Blog - SussexSportPhotography. Got to be in it to win it ! Thanks for your vote, I'll make sure we only put up really good photos of you from now on, that's a promise.

Talking of which, here's a small handful from Sunday at Basingstoke:

Don't mess with the pace

Has anyone seen Peter Parker ?

Moments later he inadvertently revealed his true identity to a journalist. Oh the irony Peter Parker.

A top win for Jonah  - 7 minutes ahead of second place in 1:06:15

Sarah Hill put in a great race in her non-farnham kit

I'm sure there's laws against artificial lungs allowed ?

How to guarantee your photo in the blog. Flattery works 100%

The Pacer Train...

Stereo thoughts

Fresh from Farnham Pilgrim - Aneta shows her other matching leopard print top. Love a bit of colour co-ordination !

It's a nice little dipper

NO SURRENDER !!! oh, ok just the once.

Well done at Reading Ben, hope your hands have warmed up since ;-)

Right that's it for today, I need some sleep, and get back to the cataloguing with the team tomorrow !

Hope the rain isn't too bad where you are,

until next time

Anthony

 

Ealing Half and Tonbridge Half Marathon 2014 now live

The race galleries for the Ealing Half Marathon and the Tonbridge Half marathon are now live and on line on the Official Race photo galleries at Sussex Sport Photography.com - direct links below

The start of the 2014 Ealing Half Marathon

Race logo	Race Gallery Link
	Ealing Half Marathon 2014 http://bit.ly/Ealing-half-2014-photo-gallery
	Tonbridge Half Marathon 2014 http://bit.ly/Tonbridge-half-2014-photo-gallery

There are some great race reports on the websites - Run247 has the Ealing report and the main Tonbridge Half Marathon website has theirs. I'm not going to even try to compete with those ones, so I'll stick to the photo diary format you've become familiar with...

Very big congratulations to Kelvin and Sandra at Ealing and to Andy and the Rotary at Tonbridge for putting on two very large community events. Both of these races are huge undertakings taking on board the co-ordination and organisation of hundreds of staff and volunteers, the traffic management, the whole event village area - it's all massive and very hard to do.
Tell them how much you enjoyed their race by giving them the feedback directly here:
Ealing Feedback (or their Facebook page here)
Tonbridge Feedback (or their Facebook page here)


As ever - a few race entries you need to think about :
Up coming Half and Marathon races for October and November

October
5th Oct: Basingstoke Half (Major Area race, closed roads) NB will sell out
5th Oct: River Thames Half Marathon (Flat and Fast)
12th Oct: Chichester Half - road and trail, and Hills
19th Oct: Abingdon Marathon (flattest and fastest with PB potential) NB Will sell out
25th Oct: Beachy Head Marathon (not flat, not fast, offroad) NB will sell out

November
8th Nov: Bexhill Poppy Half Marathon
9th Nov: Purple Patch Grand Union Half Marathon NB will sell out
16th Nov: Brighton 10k (Major Area race, closed roads) NB will sell out

Here's a few pictures from Sunday, possibly the last sunny one of September for about a year...

A message from Kelvin for you #YMF

Ealing Dan handily points out the bollard we were standing behind

Kelvin and Sandra grab a moment for me before the winner turns up

Getting the water ready - it was almost all drunk

Lovely bit of support for Ben, He was grinning broadly in the next shot, but you can't see the happy supporter in that one. He had a bit of a lead even here.

Rebecca put in a good sub 1:30 time. The floating shoes helped.

Sam senses victory as she headed for a 2:04

James was enjoying it a bit more than Emma at this point....

It's the little details that count - great caption on the hat !

Naughty Nick - we'll spot you cheeky

Paul Cuddeford https://twitter.com/PaulCuddeford did the Rhino beat you ? 2:38 !!

Sam, now is not the time to check your emails.

Don't drop those precious Jelly Babies !

Grace got a bit caught out by Haszena, but then, she has headphones in. (cue start my usual rant against headphones...)

Rachelle starts to suffer from low sugar levels

Thomas the Giraffe put in a sterling 2:16 - the Rhino didn't get him

Lewis and Anthony fight it out at the sharp end finish in 1:40:18

Adam and Liam complete it in style carrying their packs in 2:48

It can get a bit busy at the finish sometimes - makes for a great atmosphere

Tom runs in the mandatory Ealing Eagles flying finish

BBC Tech correspondent Rory runs in with his gadgets for a 2:06

I'd like to know what the main course was later.

It was a thumbs up kind of a day at Tonbridge

Things were going well at Tonbridge

It's this big a deal running a half marathon

No surrender. Only 3 miles in, 10 more to go.

Call Batman.

Cheeky smiles and miles

So far so good !

So another excellent weekend of races, we have five to go this Sunday on the 5th of October, Reading, Basingstoke, Clarendon, River Thames, and the Warrior Run. So times to get our admin heads on and get ready and planned for it all!!

Until next time
Anthony