Last weekend, several members of Newport & District Running Club made the trip down the A41 to take part in the annual Wolverhampton 10k, a local road race which takes runners on an anti-clockwise tour of the suburbs to the north and west of Wolverhampton City Centre, starting and finishing at Molineux Stadium. Initially, the route takes runners north up the Stafford road, turning left in Oxley, and looping back through Aldersley, before taking in a lap of West Park before returning to the stadium to finish.

This year, there were issues around the organisation of the event, with several runners not receiving their numbers. As such, a number of runners had to run in hand-written numbers which had no chip to track their time, and their times were not recorded by the organisers. The results are therefore incomplete, not showing all finishers, and these runners had to use their own recorded times of their watches to know how they had done, including Harry Wilmot, who was the first of the NDRC contingent, and who ran a PB of 39 minutes, 58 seconds, but in an unknown finish position.

(Left to right): Harry Stokes, Andrew Wilmot, Harry Wilmot

Of the recorded finishers, Harry Stokes set himself a new PB of 43 minutes, 29 seconds in 149th place overall. David Evans was next, taking 249th place in a time of 46:51, followed by Rob Newton, who finished 905th in 58:27. Sarah Higginson clocked a time of 1:02:05 in 1,393rd place, and Siobhan Martin finished 1,879th with her time of 1:10:40. Of the other runners who were without numbers that we are aware of, Andrew Wilmot clocked a time of 45:34, and Dave Thomas finished in 46:34, both in unknown positions.

Andrew Wilmot said afterwards: “An hour to queue to get our number, then get allocated a handwritten number (that’s 2) without a chip, then the gun went off and we were still outside the ground and had a lap still to do to start. They assured us that our time would be recorded, but the results came out, and no. Anyway, a good course, good traffic control, just a shame about the admin. Some good times though and a nice medal! I was happy with 45 minutes.”