HARWICH Runners were represented at a variety of different events.

At Sunday's Colchester Zoo Stampede half-marathon, there were seven club members among the 808 finishers.

The course started and finished inside the zoo grounds and Matthew Friend secured a huge new personal best time of one hour, 16 minutes and 31 seconds to place third overall.

His improvement was by almost four minutes.

Next home in a black and white vest was Lee Allen, in 39th position, who posted a decent 1h 34m 18s.

There were debut half-marathons for two runners with bright prospects.

Rem’a Eagle and Harry Pitham both completed the course in a very encouraging time of 1h 42m 57s.

Ian Bolton almost matched his time from the Colchester half-marathon in March as he finished in 1h 55m 11s while Helen and Ruth Benham ran together, finishing in 2h 3m 20s, which was also a new personal best time for Ruth.

At the Southend 10km race, Rob Reason placed 16th in a very competitive field which saw 1,437 runners brave the elements to cross the line.

Reason completed the challenge in a very swift 34m 59s, while Justin Cooper-Keeble was running his sixth race over the distance this year and his times have been quite consistent, managing 45m 4s here. Nicola Reason completed her first 10km race in a good 56m 40 while Michelle Cooper-Keeble posted her quickest time for the distance since 2017 with 64m 58s.

Also taking on a 10km race was Simon Harrison, who finished 19th out of 299 finishers at Martlesham in a time of 39m 13s.

Taking on one of the other distances on offer was Becky McCorquodale, who, undeterred by the heavy rain, stormed to a new club record for her age group (FV45) for the 5km distance.

She whizzed round in a new personal best time of 20m 29s to better the previous record set in 1996 by Elspeth Knott.

Last Monday saw the now annual running of the Ipswich Jaffa 40-lap track relay race.

The event also took part in pouring rain and this year saw Harwich have two teams competing.

The teams were mixed with a junior, two ladies and three men required in each team of six.

Team one saw a fastest lap from Robin Brookes of 73 seconds, although Jason Meachen almost matched that with a 74-second opening lap.

Madeline Lewis posted a fastest lap of 82 seconds and youngster Michael Knowles managed an impressive fastest lap of 76 seconds.

Consistency was the key word here.

Meachen’s, Knowles’ and Matthew Pumfrey’s eight laps were all within five seconds of each other while Lewis and Brookes both completed all of their eight laps within a six-second range.

In the other team, Will Roxby-Clarke clocked the fastest lap of 73 seconds.

There were good performances by Anne Herbert, Kim Pretty and Katie Holmes.

Jez Downs ran each of his laps within four seconds of each other while junior Eryn Lewis ran excellently, managing a fastest lap of 94 seconds.

At the local Parkrun, new member Tom Hancock was the first Harwich Runner to finish.

In third place, he set a new PB of 19m 7s.

There were also PBs for Martha Spooner and Rachel Cutler.

While most of the UK suffered from heavy rain, this was not the case for Archie Barrington in Australia.

He ran in the Perth 10k, finishing in 37m 20s for 15th overall.