THE penultimate race in Tavistock Athletic Club's Grand Prix series was held at Newquay. Eleven club members were among nearly 500 others at the start of this 10k road race.

Jim Cole put in his usual excellent performance, being first TAC to finish in 33 minutes 8 seconds in second place overall and just 15 seconds behind the winner.

Junior club members Samuel Lane De Courtin and James Best, competing in their first 10k races of the year, also ran exceptionally well, Sam finishing sixth in 35.06 and James in 25th position in 36.56.

Tony Symons finished second in his MV50 category in 36.45, recording the highest TAC age-graded performance of the day.

Trevor Williams and Christine Le Flem both won their age groups, finishing in 51.19 and 53.16 respectively.

Jason Shipton (43.23), Paul Marshall (46.39) and Samantha Marshall (54.43) all ran a season's best time, Jason by 26 seconds, Paul by two minutes and Samantha by a huge four minutes.

John Windemer finished in 55.53, gaining a silver award for his age/time, and Peter Bazley earned platinum for his time of 44.30.

On the same day, Caron and Graham De Val and Ann-Marie and Gary Chater competed in Wales' largest and best road race – the Cardiff Half Marathon. Gary put in a strong performance, knocking 15 minutes off his time over this distance recorded in January, finishing in 1hour, 42minutes, 5 seconds and first club runner home. Graham, running his sixth half marathon of the year, recorded a much-deserved gold award time of 1.44.21.

Running her first half marathon for the club, Ann-Marie ran extremely well, finishing in 1.44.21also surpassing her January race time by a huge 17 minutes.

Caron stopped to assist another runner, and still finished in 2.11.42, her second fastest time of the year over this distance. The outstanding result of the day came from Jo Meek, competing in the Jersey Marathon.

France's Svetlana Pretot smashed the women's race record by nine minutes — TAC's Jo Meek ran superbly to finish second in the women's race in 2.53.27, nine seconds inside the previous race record – a tremendous result and a great reward for all her hard training.

Not all club members race. Many run to gain or maintain their fitness and to meet up with friends.

TAC has five groups running out from Tavistock College Sports Centre at 6.20 on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. If you enjoy running, you are welcome to join. Call 01822 612577 or visit tavistockathletics.com for details.