TAVISTOCK Athletic Club held their monthly Tavy 5k race on Saturday, March 21.

It's a highly popular race, attracting runners of from clubs across the area - this month including Plymouth Musketeers, Storm Plymouth, Tamar Trotters, Instinctive Sports, Launceston Road Runners and Plymouth Harriers, as well as the usual strong turnout from TAC.

Unattached runners featured strongly too and are always welcome - it's a great opportunity to benchmark fitness and running performance each month. Participants also comment that it is one of the friendliest races around, with everyone being encouraged by the TAC volunteers who give up their time on a Saturday morning.

This month, under-17 runners Connor Duffin and Reuben Sebag-Montifiore took first and third places respectively. Connor achieved a remarkable time of 16:56 and Reuben came home in 17:45.

They were split by Daniel Westlake of Storm Plymouth, finishing in 17:36. First lady home was Ayesha Giillespie of Tamar Trotters, who finished 9th overall in 20:42.

With such a wide range of ages taking part, performances are best compared with those in the same age group, and taking into account equivalent race performances from all over the country.

The measure, computed from metrics collated by England Athletics, is called the 'Age Graded Performance' percentage. The highest performer this month was TAC's Caroline Steven, a Vet 55W runner finishing in 21:38 with an AGP of 87.21% (approaching national standard).

Also taking part were some of the participants in TAC's latest Couch to 5k Programme, who used this race to graduate from their 11-week training programme by running their first official 5k distance.

Others will graduate next month and it's expected that many will join Tavistock Athletic Club to continue their running journey, taking advantage of their thrice-weekly graded group runs, all led by qualified run leaders.

Pictured are C25k graduates - Robert Oxborough, Kate Gawadzyn, James Savage, Donald MacInnes and Vicky Matthews.