London Marathon and Mini Marathon
There were some great performances by TVH athletes in the London Marathon and Mini Marathon over the weekend of 22nd and 23rd April 2023.
Kate Olding, making her marathon debut after a great winter season in road and cross country events, ran an impressive 2:40:46 finishing 9th in the women’s mass start event. Also near the front in the women’s race was Sarah Short, 15th in 2:43:47 a 4 minute improvement on the 2022 London Marathon last October. Lisa da Silva was just outside 3 hours in her marathon debut in Amsterdam last October and this time ran an amazingly even paced race in 2:57:25.
Jess Dring-Morris also ran a very strong first marathon in 3:09:08 and Emerie Sheridan’s time of 3:14:24 was a 14 minute improvement on the 2021 London marathon.
Marion Brydson (pictured above with Nick Michael) ran a half marathon PB at Hampton Court in February in the build up to her first marathon.
In the men’s race the first TVH athlete home was James Ellis running a 3 minute PB and finishing 26th in the men’s mass start event in 2:23:29. John Borton ran well to finish in 2:33:56 (2 mins outside his best) and Oliver Teenan’s 2:39:53 was an improvement of over 4 mins. Mat Chataway and Jonathan Lacey both finished in just over 3 hours and Nick Michael in under 5 hours finished in the top 100 in his age group. Richard Hooley was well under 4 hours, a big improvement on his Brighton marathon in 2021 but he was a little disappointed after running 2:48 in a 20 mile race in March.
Paulos Surafel started strongly in his debut over the distance in the elite race, passing halfway in 1:05:13 but was forced to drop out in the second half of the race.
Mini Marathon
There was a good representation for TVH in the young athletes Mini Marathon running for their borough teams on the Saturday over the final 2.6km of the marathon course. Three TVH athletes who have always performed well in the mini marathon, Cameron McConnon, Louis Moore and Adela Svihalkova did so again. Cam ran 8:04 in the U17 race , Louis in 8:16 in the U15 race and Adela (U17) in 9:21 were both 8th quickest in their London Boroughs races.
Other TVH athletes performing well included Luca Zorzi 8:41, Reggie Rock 9:04, Barney Griffiths (U13) 9:40, Damon Walker 9:43, Maya Sutaria 9:58 and Natasha Bennett 10:06.