You thought it was going to be a quiet week after last week? Think again…

We’ll kick things off with Saturday morning’s North East Marathon Club’s 6 hour event at Herrington Park – representing us was Natasha Powell, Lisa Gilbert, Beth Ramsden and Adele Sinclair. Completing 5k loops at a time; Natasha firing out 8.5 laps to complete a full marathon in 4:33, Lisa hit 22.6 miles in 4:18, with Beth hitting 19.55 miles in 4 hours. Adele went over 5 hours to hit 30 miles in 5:23. Incredible efforts all round!

Meanwhile, Jenny Yeo was heading out to the “bog” of the Pennine Way, for a casual 21 miles… just the 1122ft of elevation gain!

ParkRun brought course PB’s for Bex Hewitson and Will Lacey (at Riverside), Paul Brunger (at Chopwell Wood) and Charlotte Bowes (at Prudhoe Riverside). With other club members visiting the courses of Riverside, Prudhoe Riverside, Durham and Larne in Northern Ireland.

Volunteering at Chopwell Wood ParkRun was our very own Kirsty Robson, as run director – ably assisted by Tony Robson, Lesley Gregory and Chris Morris.

Speaking of ParkRun, it’s our club takeover week, this coming Saturday at Chopwell Wood – please get in touch, if you’d like to volunteer. And we obviously hope to see as many of you there as possible (club kit essential, it goes without saying!)

Sunday brought the Manchester Marathon – with Grant Ramsden and Sarah Reay flying the DVRC flag – Grant finishing in a brilliant 3:26, with Sarah getting home in 4:28. In Sarah’s own words, “After doing a marathon 2 years ago with an injury and having to walk run last 7 miles was my goal to run every step of my next one and I did it” – phenomenal effort and not the last we’ll have heard from either of them with marathon efforts, we’re sure!

In non-running achievements, one of our coaches, Chris Haswell, took to two wheels to complete the Bamburgh 100k sportive on the bike.

Taking it more socially was our another of our coaches, Susan Chambers; who marshalled at a Canicross event, before hitting the trails of Chopwell.

And as usual, our Sunday Social group got out and about – hitting our usual loop of Chopwell Wood for a leisurely 7.5 miles in the April sunshine – just what the doctor ordered.

And last but not least – plenty of training runs – don’t think we don’t see those Strava stats – kudos to you all!

So, another big week ahead; with the return of Mark’s Strength and Conditioning torture workouts, more training sessions in the woods, and our ParkRun takeover… did we mention we’re still looking for volunteers? Hint hint…

Wow, where do we start with this bumper Easter weekend?! Let’s start in chronological order and go from there…

Friday morning saw the annual Good Friday relays at Albemarle Barracks – with DVRC putting out a full roster of male and female teams. Representing us in the female teams – Megan Williams, Carys Watts, Claire Knox; Kirsty Robson, Sue Urwin, Jill Lee; Sally Ann Greenwell, Jane Parnaby and Beth Ramsden.

16:43 (Megan Williams)	16:46 (Carys Watts)	16:08 (Claire Knox)
18:32 (Kirsty Robson)	19:01 (Sue Urwin)	17:35 (Jill Lee)
18:59 (Sally Ann Greenwell)	19:18 (Jane Parnaby)	19:47 (Beth Ramsden)

Team 1 finished in a brilliant 33rd place, with team 2 in 55th and team 3 in 65th, out of 77 teams – a massive well done to everyone for competing and wearing the DVRC vest with pride!

For the mens teams, we had Luke Kelly, Ethan Robson, Grant Ramsden, Paul Brunger; Steven Wade, Chris Morris, Simon Hutchinson and Andrew Walton.

14:01 (Luke Kelly)	16:38 (Ethan Robson)	14:23 (Grant Ramsden)	13:11 (Paul Brunger)
17:20 (Steven Wade)	20:30 (Chris Morris)	20:13 (Simon Hutchinson)	16:19 (Andrew Walton)

Team 1 finished in 41st, with team 2 in 82nd – in a hugely competitive field of 83 teams. Special shoutouts to Chris and Simon for making up the numbers at the last minute! We’ll be back again next year!

Friday night took us to the start of the Pennine Journey North Ultra; John Kirby leading off the DVRC relay team – John’s first leg started at 8pm, smashing out 38.65 miles in the pitch black of the night. An incredible effort!

Saturday morning began at 4:45am with Matthew Scott taking over, to take on the second leg – doing his 40 miles in under 8.5 hours – in Matthew’s own words “I would have been chuffed with 9 hours so to come in under 8.5 is a bit crazy. Knees are wrecked after I got a bit carried away hurtling down Cross Fell” – cake was then consumed at the handover to Francesca… more on that later.

8am saw the start of the 52 miler Pennine Journey, Claire Knox and Marc Runkee donning the club colours to hit the trails for just under 15 hours – with Claire finishing as second placed female and Marc finishing 5th overall. An epic effort from both of them! We’re all very proud of you!

At a time when normal people were doing their running – we had our usual ParkRun favourites out at 9am, as usual. With Chris Morris and Lesley Gregory doing marshal duties at our local, Chopwell Wood; Bex Hewitson volunteered for pacing duties at Tyne Green. There were new PBs for Andrew Walton and Theresa Owens at Chopwell Wood, while Paul Stephenson and Claire Thompson did a bit of ParkRun tourism at Portrush and Ashbourne Recreation Ground, respectively. We also had club members running at Gateshead and Tyne Green.

Back to the Pennine Journey relay, and Francesca Best was taking on the final leg for the team – just shy of 35 miles to complete the loop and return back to Blanchland on Saturday night. I could try to write up this, but instead, I’ll borrow Francesca’s words, because anything else wouldn’t do it justice…

Amazing work from everyone – including Melanie, who did well to even make the start line after being almost floored with a heavy cold – but managed to drag herself along and finish the race… after some words of ‘encouragement’ from John the day before!

One final mention to Kieran Ridley who managed to slip under the radar of last week’s roundup – just the small matter of complete the PARIS MARATHON! Kieran got round in 4:05, to finish 27820th out of 50756 – tremendous effort!

The biggest running weekend of the year, so far – and as ever there were more training runs aplenty across the week and weekend – we see you, safe to say that race season is fully upon us… I’m now off for a lie down in a darkened room!

Checking in with your weekly dose of good news from your favourite running club…

We started the week off by going back to the lighter night sessions in Chopwell Wood – managing two coached sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, completed in totally daylight… Such an underrated treat!

The two main races we had DVRC representation in were the London Landmarks half marathon and the Port of Blyth 10k.

We’ll start with Caroline Smith heading down to the big smoke for the picturesque 13.1 tour of the capital city… Caroline hammered the streets and got round in an excellent 2:40.

Derwentvalleyrunningclub.co.uk got an exclusive interview, and Caroline shared these words with us:

“Really enjoyed it! It’s absolutely brilliant to be running on the usually busy London roads. The route takes you all around the various landmarks of London from the Shard to Tower of London, finishing next to Downing Street. First 10 miles felt great. I was just taking it easy as I hadn’t done a great deal of training for it. Last few miles I had cramp in my calves but managed to jog to the end! Brilliant day and one of my favourite runs to do!”

Heading back to more familiar territory, Will Lacey and Susan Carney did us proud on a sunny day out on the coast. Will heading home in 170th in 44mins, with Susan following in 395th in 57mins.

Photos from Ian Harman Photography

ParkRun saw our club runners hitting the courses of Prudhoe, Town Moor, Chopwell Wood and Jesmond Dene; Chris Hewitson helping himself to another course PB at Jesmond Dene, in 20:21.

Chris was very pleased with the efforts of the photographer to capture this… (The shorts are Adidas, and not Global Hypercolor, as has been suggested elsewhere!)

On volunteer duty at Chopwell Wood, was our very own Kirsty and Tony Robson, alongside Andrew Walton.

And no weekend roundup would be complete without the group picture from the Sunday Social – another 12km/7.5mile loop of our usual Chopwell Wood haunt… and as is becoming the norm, Natasha and Lisa added ‘a bit’ extra to the day – hitting 27.5km/17 miles – we’re reliably informed that Natasha is going to be in charge of route plotting next week, instead.

Plenty of other training runs from club members – getting that all important race prep in – we see you!

Well, we’ve had quite the week, this week! Monday started with Mark running a thoroughly enjoyable* strength and conditioning session at St Barnabas Church, in Rowlands Gill. Then we hit the streets for the final road sessions before the start of British Summer time, for some endurance efforts… Once we got to the weekend, the fun really started!

We’ll start with Paul Brunger and Jenny Yeo hitting the brutality of the Hardmoors 55 race…

Hardmoors 55 2023. I went into this race with zero expectations of time or placings having not had the best build up as life gets in the way. I wanted to have fun and hopefully provide some dot watching entertainment

I definitely did have fun and managed a cheeky podium too, reeling in the chap ahead in the last 6 miles and somehow managing to run fairly fast after 50 miles to get away! Every race is a learning experience, this was definitely for me. I gave it all on the day and the relief as I finish was there to see!

Stunning effort from Paul – doing DVRC proud! While Jenny got round 18 miles of the course until shin tendinitis stopped play – we’re all gutted for you!

There were at least some friendly faces out on the course, in the shape of our very own Susan Chambers and Joanne Cutmore – with their own brand of “helpful screeching” whilst marshalling – love it!

Next up, hitting the delights of the Coledale Horseshoe Fell race, was Laura & Rob Peacock, Eleanor Shotton and Megan Williams… We’ll spare you the expletives shared during the race, but all four got round inside three hours; with Megan leading the pack home in 249th position after 2:21, next up were the Peacocks, with Rob in 261st and Laura in 268th – 2:31 and 2:44 respectively, with Eleanor in 269th in the same time.

We’ll leave the final words on this one to Laura – Rain, Fog, Wind, Mudfest, Complete lack of views, Never again.

Meanwhile, at ParkRun, there were a couple of course PBs for Theresa Owens at Chopwell Wood, and Lauren Smith at Prudhoe Riverside – amazing work from both of them!

Sunday brought our usual social run, in the familiar surroundings of the Chopwell – a longer than usual 17km/10miles, was turned into an even longer 26km/16miles by Natasha Powell and Lisa Gilbert – smashing out those distances. We’ll be back to Chopwell and the likes, this coming week for the start of the lighter night training sessions. Exciting times!

Lots of other training runs and recce’s for upcoming summer races – you all know who you are!

In coaching news, Sally Ann Greenwell completed all of her online modules, with a live meeting on Saturday and only needs to complete her session videos, them she’ll be ready to lead the lovely DVRC runners just in time for the nice nights!

To finish off this feel-good roundup – we have to leave the final mention to our chairman and inspiration – Tony Robson

Tony’s not going to let a minor inconvenience like a stroke stop him – back on the climbing wall, and no doubt taking the first steps on the road back to one day rocking the DVRC vest, in a race in the future. What a guy!

*Mark’s session was only classed as enjoyable AFTERWARDS – definitely not during.

Kicking off the weekend roundup, and the whole weekend of running, was Nick Armstrong repping DVRC at the returning Trail Outlaws Dark Skies Kielder 10 on Friday night – an event last run in 2019! Nick very kindly gave us a first hand account of his experience…

“One of the many excellent things about this running club is the collective experience in all sorts of races and events that people take part in and encourage others to get involved in and this year I wanted to make a concerted effort to broaden my horizons when it came to my year in running.

I’ve taken part in a few races so far and have a few more planned throughout the year and felt that I had a good mix to look forward to.

The Dark Skies 10 wasn’t one that was on my radar to enter though. Alan Vicarage at the club had signed up for it but unfortunately could no longer run it so asked me if I wanted to run it in his stead.

A few emails to the organiser, a decent headtorch purchase and a pleasant drive over to Kielder later, I was at the car park nice and early to hop on the shuttle bus and travel the 2 miles to the Hawkhirst Scout centre where registration and the start line was situated.

There seemed to be a problem with the shuttle bus though. There were hundreds of us in the queue and one, 15 seater bus to ferry us all ready to start running at 6:30. The heavens opened on the waiting runners and we were lucky it was quite mild. After a good test of my waterproofs I finally got to the front of the queue and made it to the registration hall, although admittedly later than expected.

The rain finally eased for the delayed start and with the race organiser apologising over his PA system about the lack of better shuttling capacity along with the rest of the information in his race briefing, we were finally off through the woods to start our journey in the dark. 

With just under 400 participants and me starting right in the middle of the throng, it was quite a slow start. With no idea how I was going to pace it not knowing the route or topology I settled in and waited for the field to stretch out before picking up the pace.

The route meandered anti-clockwise around the South side of the lake for a few miles. Glancing back over the lake at points as the coastline jutted out made for some great views of the long stream of headlights making their way around the course.

The path undulated but was fairly flat up until about mile 5 when it suddenly seemed to start climbing consistently up Bull Crag for what seemed like the next 3 miles or so. Making good use of Adele’s hill training I tried to keep the pace steady and on downhill sections relaxed and let gravity help me down.

I kept telling myself that what comes up must come down and by around mile 8 the ‘down’ showed up. With a nice steep decent, the end of the race approaching and the headtorch working well I had the confidence to ‘hoof it’ straight down the hill and tried to keep the pace up as it flattened out again.

Returning back past the Waterside accommodation complex, the teepees were blasting out some loud rock music which helped drag me towards the finish line at mile 10. With a quarter of a mile to go according to the watch and a few runners in front within attacking distance I gave it one final push.

My watch buzzed for mile 10 and the finish line was nowhere in sight. I knew I was close as we were running back over the route we started at, past a long hedge of fairy lights but felt I’d peaked my last effort too early especially as I turned the corner on to another stretch of hill.

With my lungs burning and legs slowing down I could hear applause from supporters and see the lights of the Scout complex. Assuming the finish line was the same as the start I was really confused when the arrows started guiding me further and further into the maze of buildings, the final arrow actually taking me into the Scout hall, past the race chip sensors to stop at a table in the middle of the room with three people sitting in seats looking like something from Britain’s Got Talent! A quick photo, a man chucking a medal round my neck and asking what size T-Shirt I would like, that was it. Race done. 10.6 miles according to Garmin.

After a lovely marshmallow and rice crispy square, and a full-fat can of Coke purchased and then demolished it was time to queue for the shuttle bus which had grown to be a decent sized mini coach for the return trip.

I really enjoyed that and would recommend it to others. With a relaxed, friendly atmosphere and all abilities catered for (I think some people even walk it), it’s a really good introduction to running at night with a headtorch.”

What Nick fails to mention, there, is that he was 33rd out of 387 runners – a fantastic result!

And the Armstrong family weren’t done there… Melanie Armstrong was joined by Sally Ann Greenwell at the Wild Deer Alnwick Trail races – 10k and half marathon. Melanie tackled the 10k, while Sally Ann took on the half marathon. Melanie finished in a brilliant 1:08, while Sally Ann smashed out a 2:32. Brilliant work from both of them!

Also doing us proud was Lisa Gilbert at the North East Marathon Club’s Urban Marathon, around the sights and sounds of Newcastle and surrounding areas. Lisa finished in just over 5 hours, despite, in her own words, not knowing where she was for 90% of the run! Great going!

ParkRun saw DVRC members visiting Prudhoe Riverside, Windy Nook, Blackhill, Chester-le-Street (Riverside) and Chopwell Wood – with Chris Hewitson helping himself to a new course PB at Windy Nook.

Finishing off the weekend, was the Sunday Mumday Social run – a 12km loop around our favourite trails of Chopwell Wood. Sunny weather and smiley faces… the best!

Happy Mother’s Day to all.