WITH the Spring marathon season kicking off in earnest this weekend, several Roadrunners were grateful to our friends at the Datchet Dashers club for staging their annual warm-up 20-miler last weekend.
Roadrunner Andy Atkinson, himself off to Paris for 26.2 miles of fun next weekend, said: “Great kudos to our Datchet colleagues for a properly marshalled training run in the Great Park. Fantastic!
“The Dashers run it as a service to all local runners as preparation for London etc. With a bacon roll to finish (at cost price) and/or a pint in the local rugby club if you prefer, it’s a magic day.” Worth remembering that for next year, especially as it is only £1 to enter.
Only snag with the Datchet event is that no official results are published. 
Across the other side of Windsor, at the Dorney Lake London Prep races (which cost 18 times as much to enter), results were published on Sunday night. Then some different results on Monday. And then some different ones to those on Tuesday.
So 48 hours after crossing the line, David McCoy dropped four places in the 20-mile race, Chris Lucas, Gemma Buley and Brian Kirsopp each dropped six places, and Alan Freer ten.
Brian’s only consolation was that he was deemed to be the fourth lady to finish!
Biggest loser of all was Paddy Hayes, originally declared the winner of the 24-mile race but later relegated to ninth. “I guessed I was about sixth or seventh,’” said a rueful Paddy. “Shambles!”
Whatever, here are all last weekend’s results, plus a couple of overseas marathons from the previous weekend…
March 24th
Marseille Marathon
Pos Name Chip
305 Andrew Butler 3:47.10 PB
Limassol Marathon
Pos Name Chip
174 Caroline Jackson 3:56.30
202 Paul Monaghan 4:05.57
The Big Cheese (15 miles)
Pos Name Chip
273 Juliet Fenwick 3:41.27
March 31st
Dorney Marathon Prep Race, 16 miles
Pos Name Chip
9 Chris Buley 1:51.04
43 Sahan Jinadasa 2:25.22
46 Alice Carpenter 2:25.41
104 Dave Wood 3:01.30
Dorney Marathon Prep Race, 20 miles
Pos Name Chip
13 David McCoy (Snr) 2:04.07
26 Chris Lucas 2:13.35
38 Gemma Buley (3rd lady) 2:17.47
44 Brian Kirsopp 2:25.26
70 Alan Freer (1st M60) 2:36.40
150 Brian Fennelly 2.53.05
166 Jana Nehasilova 2:57.01
174 Ben Adams 2:59.05
178 Carmen Fuentes-Vilchez 2:58.43
239 Judith Ritchie 3:10.01
390 Corinne Rees 3:43.13
Dorney Marathon Prep Race, 24 miles
Pos Name Chip
9 Paddy Hayes (3rd M40) 2:54.25
31 David Dibben (1st M70) 3:35.13
Wokingham 10k
Pos Name Chip
2 Richard Hallam-Baker 39.28
6 Chris Cutting 42.25
12 Ed Dodwell (1st M60) 43.22
22 Stuart Bradburn 45.33
65 Katie Gumbrell 53.53
135 Angelique Haswell 1:00.22
137 Adele Graham 1:00.35
158 Liz Fletcher 1:03.36
178 Amy Hawkes 1:06.33
Wokingham 5k
Pos Name Chip
4 Nick Adley 21.59
Treehouse 10k
Pos Name Chip
50 Bryan Curtayne 45.53
Dorset Ooser Marathon
Pos Name Chip
88 Simon Denton 4:44.14
89 Sian James 4:44.14
181 Donald Scott-Collett 5:37.08