www.DatchetDashers.com

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have spotted that most of the photos on the website have stopped working! This is because we moved them to another host, and are in the process of updating the old links to point to the correct location.

Keep an eye on the photo gallery  if you’re after something in particular

Found at the end on one of the benches – one black Nike headband. If this is yours please let David Priddy know.

David Priddy ventured north to the Telford 10k and entered the elite race for sub-40 runners, hoping he wouldn’t finish last. He at least justified the elite race entry with a 39:52 clocking and thankfully didn’t quite finish last. When the times for the elite and mass start races were combined the time was good enough for 80th overall.

A great time for a first black park run from Jackie

Zoe Smart reports;

A group of 5 Dashers went up to the Lake District weekend of 9 Jan for a pretty extreme 13 mile hike from Threlkeld to Helvellyn in the snow and ice. Setting off early in the morning (with two experienced mountaineers), we were lucky enough to see the sun rise and shine across Blencathra, opposite the route up to our first peak. Wading through deep snow was great fun, although it made for tough going until crampons were donned, making the climb up to Clough Head a lot less exhausting. Conditions across the rest of the peaks surprised us all, with a windchill at around minus 20 (!), beautiful spindrift and stunning virgin snow all around - looked and felt a bit like a North Pole expedition at times Ice axes and GPS came in very handy and I’ve learnt that bags of nuts are definitely not the right snack to take in those conditions when ravenous - struggling to open the bag and fumbling to eat them in gloves is near impossible (fingers froze within minutes of having them exposed!). Reaching the summit of Helvellyn at 3117ft felt like a real feat in the conditions and locals certainly seemed surprised at our achievement. Thai food and beers were well deserved by all that night…  A big thanks to Brent for organising the weekend, which was tough going and magical - looking forward to the next Dashers adventure

Click link for photos

Simon Black reports:

As Britain freezes, the temperature in Barcelona was predicted to be a balmy 4 degrees, but on the day rose to a wonderful 12 degrees in the seaside town of Sitges. With nearly 2500 starters, this race is not as hilly as Swanage, but a 2km hill from 8-10k should have put paid to any PB’s…… but not for Kathryn who took nearly 3 minutes off her PB!!!!
 
                     Place    Cat position  10k time   Gun Time   Chip time 
Kathryn Black 1746       100/230     53:47       1:50:39    1:49:45
Simon Black    179        176/2216    41:50       1:24:54    1:24:17
 
To give some idea of the quality of the race, the top 6 all ran sub 1:10 and the top 60 all beat 1:15. You also got a technical t-shirt and a free ruck-sack all for €15.
 

A good start to the new year of running from all those who ran:

1st Jan

2nd Jan

Brent says: I always like to start my year with these two races – especially the New Years Day one. 1st January absolutely freezing in Hyde Park. Lovely.

Tadworth 10 miles

Serpentine 10K