Amy Greenhalgh was first female home, beating the women’s course record at Saturday’s fourth running of the eight-and-a-half mile Haldon Heartbeat trail race at Haldon Wood, writes Dave Mutter.

Her game plan was to start out hard and ‘see what happens’ and her time was an amazing 58:19. Well done, Amy.

Tim Lenton ran strongly to finish third overall in a field of nearly 200 runners in 52:44. The ever-improving Ian Apps was 33rd, 1:03:24. Eleanor Wood was cruising down the hill to home when her husband shouted ‘20metres behind’. To her horror she saw out of the corner of her eye the slimmed down figure of Roger Bramley charging after her. There was an eyeball out race to the finish with Eleanor getting in 48th, 1:06:30 and Roger sprinting home in 49th one second behind. Thank you to Haldon Trail Runners for a most enjoyable event which just about dodged the heavy showers.

Many AVR’s enjoy multisport so some of them did a small duathlon on Easter Monday with a two-mile run followed by an 11-mile bike ride then a repeat of the run. As expected, Matt Clist took the lead in the first run, finishing 25 seconds clear of Garry Perratt, but Garry quickly overhauled him on the bike, finishing the ride 34 seconds clear of then second-placed James Trewick. Garry thought he had it in the bag, but hadn’t counted on Matt’s running prowess, the latter starting the run nearly a minute and a half down but finishing just two seconds behind Garry, all very exciting! Full results were; 1, Garry Perratt, 1:00:18; 2, Matt Clist, 1:00:20; 3, James Trewick, 1:02:19; 4, James Sibley 1:03:55; 5, Simon d’Albertanson 1:06:26; 6, Phil Bayliss 1:08:40; 7, Eleanor Wood, 1:11:21; 8, Geoff Woodward 1:13:56; joint 9th, May and Tony Wood, 1:20:27.