HORWICH Harrier Phil Marsden claimed first place at the Great Hameldon race - the first fixture in this year’s Pendle and Burnley Grand Prix as several club runners shone.

In the same race Paul Boardman took second for the M60 category.

Dan Gilbert opted for the bigger challenge of the three-peaks race in the Yorkshire Dales for a top-100 finish, having a few days earlier taken fourth in the Fo(e) Edge fell race above Cowpe - a run that earned him the M45 category prize.

Toby Middleton completed the three-race Bunny series at Haworth where the feature is a mix of runners across all ages. He won the last race to take the title and then followed up with the fastest individual time in the Bunny relay team race to finish in seventh with his two scratch team-mates.

On the road, Erica Booth took the women’s first prize at the Morecambe half marathon in a splendid time of 1hr 32mins 10secs, while Simon Bruton had a great run at the Alderley Edge 10k where his 10th place in 33:41 gave him a top-100 place for the M35 age group in the UK.

Steve Thomasson went further afield to the Spreewald half marathon in Germany where he was pleased with his strong 1:45:39 time and is now looking forward to his June outings to the Spitsbergen and Torshavn half-marathons.

Gareth Webb uses parkrun as an opportunity to check out training progress and having secured a 19th UK ranking at the marathon distance in the recent Manchester marathon, he maintained his sixth UK M65 ranking for parkrun with his 19:20 at Stretford parkrun.

At Astley Park in Chorley, the popular trail series resumed for the first time since 2019 and Julian Goudge, a previous series winner, took second place. It was a one-two in the M60 category as Paul Boardman was first, closely followed by Ste Williams, while in the junior race Charlotte Wilkinson was the female winner.

The previous week the juniors squad took part in the Youth Development League in Carlisle where several Harriers impressed, including Lena Wegrzyn winning the under-17 long jump and Nathan Hargreaves taking second and third places in the u20 100m and 200m.

On Saturday, the Harriers took a team to the Northern Athletics meeting at Ashton-under-Lyne where they joined forces with Chorley AC to take on five other clubs.

The team of 16 athletes enjoyed achieving eight personal- best performances and the day ended with winning relay races for the combined girls’ teams, with Sophie Walton featuring strongly after her national title-winning indoor winter season, including a new PB of 11.8 secs in the 100m.

There were also excellent debuts at u17s in this league for Joel Beckett, Emma Bradley and Charlotte Wilkinson.

The junior fell squad also enjoyed the spectacular scenery of the Black Combe fell race in the English junior fell championships where the tough course provided excellent experience for the runners at all ages.