LESS than a week after running a personal best at the Age UK 10 kilometre race in Exeter, Okehampton Running Club member Mark Hawkins, along with fellow ORC Beverly Kidson, took part in the Fast Friday 10k, also in Exeter.

This is a two lap, traffic free and pancake flat 10km run on footpaths and cycle tracks around Exwick Playing Fields and the River Exe Flood Relief.

The runners found the spring sunshine and lack of breeze rather too warm for comfort.

Mark and Beverly both ran excellent races with Mark finishing just ten seconds slower than last week in 46 minutes 48 seconds while Beverly finished in a very good time of 49.54 to come second in the FV55 age category.

The previous week five ORCs made the long journey down to Redruth to take part in the final leg of the Westward League cross-country.

This is the first year the club has taken part in this event and has managed to field a complete men’s team in five of the six races with varying numbers of ladies also taking part.

The team of Andy Vallance, Matt Pitson, Paul Crease, Stuart May and Tom Gill put in a particularly good performance in this final round boosting their position in the overall placings to eighth out of 61 teams.

The men’s B team finished 45th and the men’s veteran’s team were 16th. Despite having fewer runners, the ladies’ team finished 35th out of 64 and the lady veterans were 19th.