Fast times and low handicap scores at Conwy Half Marathon

This weekend’s Conwy Half Marathon produced great times for runners throughout the field and also produced the week’s top three road performances in the UK for men and four of the top ten for women.

The 13.1 mile course starts and finishes by the iconic Conwy Castle, on the quayside and allows the runners to get into a good rhythm for the first two thirds of the race before taking them up the Great Orme (and some steep climbs) and back down again.

This year, the course was given an SSS of 1.2 and this reflected the difficulty of the course on the day, Despite the Great Orme challenge, in the latter part of the course, conditions were cool and still and so good times were to be had and the event produced the week's top three road performances in the UK for men and four of the top ten for women.

Mohammed Abu-Rezeq (handicap MINUS 5.1) won the race by just two seconds, in a time of 67:16, from Yared Hagos (handicap -4.5) and Russell Bentley (handicap -3.7) finished third in 68:51 more than two and a half minutes in front of 4th place. This was a particularly good run for Russell who lowered his handicap score by 0.1. He had been one of the 52 who had run under 31 minutes in the final of the runbritain Grand Prix, at the Age UK Leeds Abbey Dash 10k, last week and that had given him a handicap score of -3.6.

In the women's race, Kim Fawke-Williams (handicap 1.0) reduced her score by 0.2 for her time of 77:51. In 2nd place was Ali Lavender (handicap 1.1) whose handicap stayed the same for her time of 78:59. Ali ran 34:54 for 10k in the final race of the runbritain Grand Prix and had reduced her handicap score by 0.1 in that race. Her run at Conwy kept her score the same. For Kelly Crickmore (handicap 1.2) there was an increase of 0.1 as her time of 79:59 for the Conwy Half Marathon was a little less impressive than her 36:01 for 10k in Leeds. Dianne McVey (handicap 2.2) finished 4th and took her handicap score down by 0.1 by running 80:41.

For more details on their performances and the top ten male and female performances from the last seven days click here.