The Hendy Eastleigh 10K is billed as ‘the home of the PB’, as many of the 2,285 finishers at the 37th running of this popular race would agree.
Perfect weather conditions greeted the huge field of runners at Places Leisure, Eastleigh, with the main sponsors Hendy Group stepping up for the sixth year to support the event.
This year’s race was dedicated to the memory of former Race Director and Southampton AC member Dave Blackman, who sadly passed away last year and whose legacy lives on in the race he did so much to shape into the top event that it now is, with a whopping £3,500 prize fund and many elite athletes participating.
In stark contrast to previous years when this race made up part of the Hampshire Road Race League calendar and would attract a large number of Road Runners who simply refused to be deterred by the unthinkably early start time of 9am if it meant moving up the ranks and scoring team points for those coveted league positions, this year only two of our red white and blue stars made their way over the water at the crack of dawn just for the fun of it.
Immanuel Skeet and Kenny Harrison donned their club colours, with Alison Butcher going over as support crew, and lined up raring to go at the Fleming Park start line. The course flips a right onto Shakespeare Road, loops around bringing the runners into the long and straight Woodside Avenue. A couple more little twists and turns and then they were headed for home along Chestnut Avenue.
Immanuel brought it home first for our two man team, crossing the line in an impressive 44:07, with another 300 runners behind him in his age category alone, he finished 197th out of 497 senior male runners.
Kenny completed the proceedings for the day finishing under the hour mark in 59:31 and with a great big smile on his face. He told me that he was “Really happy to have completed my first race in over 2 years. And also to have finished in under an hour (59:31). Really like the Eastleigh course & felt good all the way round 🙂.”
Awesome running both of you. Very well done!
Immanuel Skeet 44:07
Kenny Harrison 59:31
