FIFTEEN Blue Vests abstained from the usual festive refuelling to compete in the Ribble Valley 10k from Clitheroe.

Blackburn Harriers’ closed-roads route doubled as host for the Northern Athletics 10k Championships and Karl Darcy was the first from Bolton to cross the line, two seconds shy of a 32-minute time, for 25th overall out of 1,080 runners.

Chris Povey was among a number who set personal bests, though his 18 seconds improvement from 2015 was surpassed by Paul Mills’ six minutes.

Laura Lombard and Nicky Cartridge both clocked superb 37-minute times, and impressively finished 10th and 11th, respectively.

With Katie McNulty as the third counter, the female team took silver medals.

Also of note was David Chrystal’s super debut – a sub-40 time – while junior Cameron Donnelly eclipsed father Alex for the first time in direct racing.

BUH&AC times: Karl Darcy 32:02, Chris Povey 36:21, Laura Lombard 37:12, Nicola Cartridge 37:26, Stephen Bonney 37:41, Paul Trainor 38:22, Paul Mills 38:46, David Chrystal 39:31, Craig Kenny 40:01, Dom Clarke 41:38, Dean Johnson 41:41, Andrew Doyle 42:11, Cameron Donnelly 45:21, Katie McNulty 49:03, Alex Donnelly 55:45.

Elsewhere, Rachel Bailey’s 16mins 40secs was 45th of the 323 field at Lancaster and Morecambe’s Festive 4k.