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Phoenix 10K But Not As We Know It

Wednesday 29th July 2020

Not quite the party atmosphere 10th anniversary celebration of our own annual 10k race that we would have liked, but plenty of highlights from this years’ Virtual race – not least the £750 that we raised for local homelessness charity the Clocktower Sanctuary.

In general it was the veteran athletes who stole the show this year, with Phoenix youngster Reuben Hoyte’s excellent winning time of 31:13 put into the shade by his mum - Arena 80’s Caroline Hoyte(V50) - who was the fastest female in 37:47. Still waiting to see Kurt come out of hiding and try to reclaim top-dog status in that mega-talented family!

There was  a flurry of other outstanding performances from older athletes with top age-grading  of over 96% claimed by  the ever-amazing V55 Elspeth Turner, who finished just two seconds slower than Caroline in 37:49.  And new kid on the (Brighton ) block V50 Andrew Simpson ran an excellent 35:25 which earned him a top-six finish. Virtual races do also have the advantage of enabling runners from far afield to take part and the best of these was surely Totley’s V65 Anthony Whitehouse, who ran 38:02 on the Castleton Road next to the River Derwent in Derbyshire to turn the tables emphatically on Paul Whelpton after losing out to him in the European Masters Half Marathon Championship in Venice last year. Paul’s 39:59 did (just) ensure that every runner in the V65 category finished in sub 40 – interesting to know if that has ever happened in a race before? 

Thanks as ever to the tireless Andy Bone and his team of helpers, who discovered that even a virtual 10k race can throw up plenty of time-consuming admin tasks and unforeseen problems to solve. And thanks and well done to all those who took part, especially those from Arena 80 and Brighton & Hove AC and other local clubs who found the time to support us and our partner charity Clocktower Sanctuary in this challenging period.