North Herts Road Runners on Tour

John Auld

John Auld headed north to race the Silkstone Shuffle, a seasonal 4.5-mile multi terrain race organised by Barnsley Harriers with a very brutal 2-mile uphill start.

​Auld started off chasing the race leader but quickly eased off the pace as he realised he was probably going faster than he wanted. Focusing then on holding second place he pushed on up the hill. ‘I’d forgotten just how hard this hill is, it just keeps going, and going... Twists and turns and surface changes, it’s really tough. It does level off near the top however, the flat section is where conditions were icy, and it was rather dangerous. I had a couple of little slips and decided to slow down a touch. This is when I got overtaken’ said Auld. Holding on Auld finished in 3rd place overall, with a new PB of 27:24.
​
This is the 11th time Auld has run the race, and he’s worked himself up from outside the top 20, to podium finishes.

Chris Poole who has run 185 Parkruns was doing a bit of Parkrun tourism in Poland at the weekend completing the alphabet challenge. The challenge consists of running a Parkrun which begins with every letter of the alphabet (excluding X, as there isn’t one yet). On his fourth international Parkrun Poole completed his challenge at Jablonna.

Other squirrels braving the cold at Parkruns this weekend included Claire O’Sullivan finishing in 23:49 at Strathclyde parkrun, Phil Hunt 23:11 at Ally Pally and closer to home at Stevenage John Cooper 21:05, Adam Wilson 24:28 and Paul Bowal 25:01.

---