YJ Does His Bit for His Country

The 2019 Maidenhead Half Marathon had been promoted as including The Celtic Challenge, a veterans' home international. John had secured a place in the England V75 squad, by virtue of achieving  a top three place in one of the selection races.

He had been hoping for a sub 2 hour time, preferably closer to 1:55. However on the day it just wasn't there and he ran a, nevertheless very respectable, time of 2:02:47. To save you doing the maths, that's just over 9 minute miles.

The race results are a bit of a hotchpotch; one version has him down as 6th out 8 V75 men; another has him down as 1st V80 - he turns 80 in fact, 16 days after the race date. What is clear that he finished 11 minutes in front of the first man who was actually 80 years old on the day.

I can find no trace for the results of the Celtic Challenge - perhaps culling them from the overall race results was beyond the scope of the results system.

A couple of photos:-

Our man with his grandson Milton.

...and with a lady who obviously took a shine to him - he didn't disclose whether they exchanged contact details.

Let's see what he can do in his first race as a real 80 year old - The Snowdonia Marathon - in six weeks time.