Horwich’s Isaac Battye gained his second England vest at the British and Irish Junior Championships in the Scottish Borders last weekend.

In the under-20 race, it was a tight finish as Scotland beat England by two points with Battye the third counter for the team as he finished the 5.9k course with 275m ascent in ninth place.

The Cademuir rollercoaster route for the race from Peebles brought reward for the England team as the combination of U20 and U17 results was enough to win the City of Edinburgh Trophy by four points ahead of Scotland and Wales and Battye was pleased with the overall result.

He said: “The course was hard and the humidity on the day made it even harder.”

All in all it was a great performance and experience for a young Harrier.

Also on the fells, the Run the Moors Grand Prix visited Rochdale for the Hades Hill race, where there were some good results from the select Harriers team.

Dan Gilbert took ninth place, just keeping ex-Harrier Andy Ford at bay by one second on the long, boggy downhill run-in. This puts Gilbert in third place in the men’s open series with one race to go at Withins Skyline next month. He is well positioned to take the M45 series title as he stands four points ahead of Neil Swan, of Holcombe Harriers. Paul Boardman has a long history at the Hades race and it was no surprise to see him turn up again to take the second M60 place. Lawrence Pinnell completed the men’s team to give them 143 points and maintain them in fourth place in the club series. Alison Mort has had another fine season in the RTM Grand Prix and at Hades was the first qualifying F40 to consolidate her second place in the F40 series and an impressive fourth in the women’s open category.

Mark Seddon certainly enjoys the long-distance races and ran the Lake District Classic Mountain Trial, which is an annual event held at different venues in the Lakes each September - considered one of the major events in the fell runner’s calendar.

The course is a severe test of route choice, navigational skill and stamina in difficult mountain country and will often cover 25 miles with 8,000 feet of ascent and descent. This year, Seddon completed the course in 8hrs 53mins to be the first M60 competitor. Meanwhile, in the Forest of Bowland at Slaidburn, it was the Hodder Valley Show where Suzanne Budgett added yet another prize to her growing collection as she enjoys a renaissance in a fine running career. This week the stonking heat did not prevent her finishing the eight-mile course in 1:33:33 for first F60 place.

On the road, the recent Bob Graham Round triumph for Marcus Taylor led him to Budapest as one of his BGR support runners, Richard O’Reilly, encouraged him to take the Thomasson tour trail of European half-marathons. In the Wizz Air half-marathon, the Horwich pair had their own race as O’Reilly went through the 10k mark in 43:52 - eight seconds ahead of Taylor. But it was he who was ahead at the line, finishing in 1:31:06 for 200th place ahead of O’Reilly in 222nd. O’reilly had the compensation of taking second place in the M55 category and was pleased with that as he was carrying an injury.

Meanwhile, Steve Thomasson, of tour fame, was preparing for the Odense half-marathon in two-weeks’ time with a 44:44 time at the Jailbreak 10k in Lancaster, his third best 10k time.

At the Great North Run, in Newcastle, Chris Charnley was running to raise money for the Marie Curie charity and finished in 1:56:59 for the 13.1-mile course, and took 8,254th place of more than 60,000 runners - many of whom experienced a torrential downpour at the end of the race.

In parkrun, Jason and Janet Middleton continued their tourist trail with a run at Tawd Valley, in Skelmersdale, where Jason ran his 101st parkrun.

Top result was Robert Seddon running the Peel course for the first time and finishing second, in 17:44, with Rob Jackson at the same course getting 84.13 per cent for the top age-grading by more than five per cent.

Simon Bruton was third at the fast Stretford course and at Burnley Graham Schofield got an 80.02 per cent result. Grace Freary and Louis Yates were second and third at the Queens Park Bolton junior parkrun.