Hot Toddy, Kielder Marathon, Trimpell 20 and more …

The sun was out over the weekend of 8th and 9th March and the racers of Rochdale Harriers had a spring in their step as they made the most of the good weather, busily competing all over the North.

Without doubt the result of the weekend saw Izzie Mitchell race home first female and 16th overall at Todmorden Harriers’ Red Hot Toddy 10k Road Race on Sunday 9th March.

221 runners lined up to start the race which warms up around Centre Vale park before roughly two gruelling uphill kilometers up Sigget Lane, Doghouse Lane and Parkin Lane, before looping back into the centre of Todmorden to finish back in the park.

Izzie clocked 43:53. Chris Gee also raced and finished 83rd in a time of 53:22.

Also on Sunday, Ben Hadfield represented Greater Manchester in the under 15s race at the Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships at Wollaton Park, Nottingham.

A fantastic reward in a debut cross country season for a young athlete who is only improving in all disciplines, Ben stopped the clock after 17:22 for 297th place in a field of 311 of top talent from across the United Kingdom.

On the night of Saturday 8th March Lee Meadowcroft headed North with his headtorch to take on the Kielder Dark Skies Marathon.

This draining trail race is a night time, anti-clockwise tour around Kielder Water starting at 5:30pm and is actually 0.4 miles longer than the 26.2mile marathon distance. Lee completed the race in 4:14:38 which also earned him 16th place out of 215 runners.

At Lancaster’s Trimpell 20 mile race on Sunday, Danny Bennett clocked 2:10:05, Gary Marshall 3:26:58 and Julie Smith 4:26:26.

The race is a great test ahead of the approaching marathon season and is essentially three out and backs from Lancaster’s City Centre, firstly heading out towards Brookhouse, then out to Morecambe and finally to Aldcliffe before finishing on the banks of the River Lune.

Two harriers travelled west and joined over 6000 other runners at the Chester 10k, also on Sunday 9th March.

Phil Locket stopped the clock after 41:05 in 207th place, with Corina Haynes 1133rd and a time of 49:56, which was enough to claim the female Vet60 crown.

It was a double race weekend for Phil as he also ran in the Tameside 5km race event on Saturday afternoon. The event was split into four races depending on predicted time. Phil raced in the ‘B’ heat and clocked 19:18 for 31st place out of 56 runners.

In the same race, and appearing in the Vet50 category for the first time, Juliet Smith ran a highly credible 20:21 which made her first FV50.

The evergreen Vet70, Ray Dalby raced in the ‘C’ heat and stopped the clock after 26:51 for 50th place in his race and 1st MV70. 200 runners in total competed across the four races.

Over in Yorkshire, Pete Butterworth ran the Ian Roberts Memorial fell race, This race is a 6.5 mile fell race on boggy, rough moorland on the edge of the Pennines.  Pete finished in 42nd place from 89 starters, clocking 1:10:36.