Matlock Athletic Club stay busy during lockdown

The club’s 300 Virtual Charity Relay will take place over the weekend of 2nd and 3rd May when 76 club members will be attempting to run 300 miles in 36 hours of continuous activity.

The run will be an out and back course from home to ensure social distancing and Government physical activity rulings are observed.

The run starts on Saturday morning at 8.00 am with junior Jacob Jones first off for his half hour slot.

The run ends with the last run at 7.30pm on Sunday by another club junior Sophie Hopkinson.

There are runners across all ages from juniors to the eldest 70 year old Les Thurston.

The mileage for each runner accumulates throughout the weekend until the target 300+ miles is reached.

Members recently took part on the Fast Mile Challenge. It finished with 56 runners taking part over a week, including seven juniors and 17 ladies.

Runners had to run a mile from home as fast as they could and it was compelling to watch all the times come in as members worked out of their comfort zones trying to nail that fast time.

The winner was Simon Fisher in a time of 4 minutes 21 seconds and the fastest lady was Hayley Gill in 5 minutes 7 seconds.1st Junior male, Oliver Lloyd 4 minutes 49 seconds and fastest Junior girl, Caitlin McCloy 5 minutes 37 seconds.

On Sunday 26th April the London Marathon should have taken place and because this has been postponed the chance to raise millions of pounds in charity money has been lost for now, so the organisers came up with the idea to raise funds by anyone undertaking a 2.6 challenge (based on the 26 miles of a marathon).

So it can be anything from 26 people in an online workout, bike ride for 26 miles or 2.6 miles, run – indoors or outdoors, or round your garden for 26 miles or 2.6 miles.

Matlock’s Darren Worthy ran a full marathon over seven days, starting on 26th April. It was a big step up for an athlete who has only ever ran 10k before.