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Brighton Half Marathon, 19 Feb 2012
The day dawned frosty but sunny for the Brighton Half Marathon, and 13 Lewes AC runners were among the 7300 who took part. The course was flat and easy, with only a mild headwind as runners came back into town after the first loop out towards Ovingdean. However at around this point those watching their times at each mile marker were thrown into consternation as they seemed to have slowed down dramatically, and at the finish line runners with GPS watches were unanimous that they had run about 13.5 miles rather than the regular 13.1 mile marathon, adding around 3 minutes to their times.
Finally on Monday afternoon the race organisers published an acknowledgement and apology on their website: the turnaround between mile 4 and 5 had been placed too far to the East, adding 1/3 of a mile to the course (and thereby causing the runners to run an extra 2000 miles or so). In view of this, the organisers added ‘adjusted times’ to the results, based on how long each runner would have taken to run an exact Half Marathon distance, so that masses of runners who had failed to achieve personal bests suddenly found that they had done so after all.
This unfortunate error apart, Lewes AC runners had a great day, with a slew of personal bests (at least as judged by their adjusted times). Tom Morris finished first for the club and in 13th place overall with a very impressive adjusted time of 1:15:15. He was followed by Nick Parrish (189th overall, 1:27:10), Mat Homewood (1:28:47), Colin Bennett (1:31:46), Neil Baker (1:33:06), Andrew Chitty (1:34:56), Ian Donald (1:35:58) and Matthew Button (1:36:16). In the women’s race the first Lewes AC finisher was Carolyn Bennett, running her first half marathon with a great time of 1:42:33 that placed her 36th in the women’s over-40 age group. She was followed by Suzanne Holliman (1:49:52), Stephanie Crespin (1:55:42), Sue Juncal (2:08:10) and Rebecca Martin (2:20:09).