The Junior Axe Valley Runners section’s year runs from September to September, so the awards for last year’s Juniors were presented at Monday’s club night, writes Dave Mutter.

The Boy Runner of the year was Josh Coates, Girl Runner of the year – Lydia Clapp, Most Improved runner – Emily Elliott and the Chris Levene Perpetual Trophy for Endeavour was won by Andrew Watson. Hearty congratulations to all the winners.

The Junior AVR handicap winner for September was James Hansford in 29:50, followed By Alex McLoughlin, 19:58 and Ed Polley 20:04.

?Luke Reed decided to tackle the Weymouth Classic distance triathlon. On arrival in Weymouth, Luke noticed that the waves were particularly big, and thought they may change the event to a run/bike/run. No such luck! The 1500m sea swim went ahead as planned, after the swim came a 25mile hilly bike course that was made even harder by the severe cross/head winds. Thankfully, the 10k run was slightly more sheltered from the wind. Luke finished 10th overall out of 150 starters in 2:37:38. Splits were swim – 36:34, bike 1:16:16 and Run 41:46.

In heavy rain, Luke also participated in the Langport Sprint Triathlon. The race consisted of a 400m outdoor pool swim, which he completed in a PB of 6:44 mins. A 22.5km bike which, with the rain and wind was very dangerous, but Luke finished it in 41:44 and a 5km multi-terrain run, which he completed in 21:45, giving him an overall time of 1:10:13, 10th overall out of just over 300 brave competitors.

?Gavin Warren ran the SLaMM half marathon at Langport and finished in 2hrs 26mins, held up for 10-15 minutes when direction signs were removed.Retro Reynolds and Geoff Woodward would have run the full marathon, but they got lost trying to find the race start and didn’t realise the half marathon started later. Kevin Glover ran the full marathon and was delighted to finish 15th in 4:05:34.

?Graham and Diane Newton took part in “King Alfred's Torment”, a seven-mile cross country race around the Stourhead Estate with hills and mud aplenty. It had been raining heavily earlier in the day and continued to do so off and on throughout the race. Well done to Graham who came in as second over 60 male veteran, 44th overall in 58 mins. Diane was pleased to come in at 145th in 1:32 in what was her toughest race to date.