THE six Blue Vests on the 10k course of Great Manchester Run were led by Tom Lucas’ barnstorming top-100 time of the 26,044 field with 36mins 23secs for 94th place.

David Tomlinson was next in 53:44 (7,150th) to collect a brilliant bronze in the M75 category.

Lee Petch (56:00), Geoffrey Knowles (58:28) and Ged Tucker (59:57) all came in under the hour mark, with the latter raising money for Alzheimer’s UK. Claire Lomax ran 1:13:02 in her debut on the course.

Elsewhere, Simon Dally won the M45 category at the first edition of the 2016 Horwich Jubilee series. He finished the five miles in 28:23, with Burnden’s Phil Eccleston opening an unbridgeable gap after two miles.

In ninth, Dominic Gavin made it two Blue Vests in the Top 10 of the 113 field with 30:24. Isabella Merritt was first girl and fifth overall in the junior race, clocking 6:06.

Blue Vests were also out in force at multi-discipline eventing again. This time, it was the standard (a 750m swim, 20k bike ride and 5k run) and sprint (750m swim,20k ride and 5k run) triathlons at Southport.

Matt Pemrick described his swim as “uncharacteristically poor” after he came in some four minutes slower than expected due to it being “a bit turbulent in the over-40s wave.”

This was almost balanced by an uncharacteristically reasonable T1 and a very strong bike ride, averaging 21mph, which saw him overhaul both Andrew Doyle and Scott Crompton. However, he had nowhere near enough time in the bank to cope with their strong running, which saw them switch places again.

BUH&AC times:

Standard – Scott Crompton 2:28:21, Andrew Doyle 2:28:53, Matthew Pemrick 2:35:44, Chris Pickford 2:49:59.

Sprint – Tony Warham 1:23:09.