Last Thursday saw the start of Stone Master Marathoners’ Spring Treble, a 3-race series that takes place annually on three consecutive Thursday evenings on tough, off-road 5-mile courses. This year, however, the “Marquis Mayhem” lived up to its name, as some runners managed to run an extra mile!
Taking place at Marquis Drive, in the heart of Cannock Chase, the first race in the series took runners on a tour of a very scenic area of Cannock Chase, including the trails around Marquis Drive as well as Stony Brook and Fairoak pools. This was the first time running this route, and some confusion ensued as many of the runners were sent the wrong way, making a tough course even tougher, and a 5-mile race into approximately a 6-mile one.
As not all of the runners ran the same route, the organisers did their best to equalise the results between everyone, and offered up two sets of prizes to allow for two groups of runners having run different distances, through no fault of their own.
Alex Millington was the first Newport runner, finishing 8th overall, and 2nd in category, in a “combined” time of 40 minutes, 34 seconds (Alex, as one of the front-runners, was part of the smaller group that got caught up in the confusion of the distance issues). Everyone else was part of the larger group who all ran the same distance, and Peter Johnstone was next, 35th overall in 46:39, followed by Graham Rogers, who was 77th in 53:47. Annabel Bolton was 94th in a time of 58:12, whilst Selwyn Plant finished 115th in 1:02:29. Nick Wylie secured 120th spot with his time of 1:04:38, just ahead of Ralph Humphries, who clocked a time of 1:05:09 for 121st place.
Newport & District Running Club 