Five plucky St Albans Striders travelled to Germany to complete the Berlin Marathon.

Ian Hirth continues to go from strength to strength with his running, as he achieved a huge personal best to finish in three hours and 12 minutes, three minutes under the Good For Age qualification time for next year’s London Marathon.

He was followed by Stephen Elkan in 3:38:35, Richard Olney in 3:57:18, Mark Travers in 4:17:45 and Andrew Hull in 4:19:17, who were all very happy with their times.

They weren’t the only Striders running marathons this weekend however; in Scotland Andrew Maher finished Inverness in 4:25:05 whilst at the same time Tim Searle completed the Loch Ness Marathon in 3:35:13, over half an hour quicker than he managed the same course last year.

Across the Atlantic Jack Brooks continued his advance towards becoming a quadruple 100 marathon runner, by running his 392nd at the Huffin Puffin Marathon in Newfoundland in a time of 4:30:05.

Earlier in the week, St Albans Striders had another great turnout at the Hatfield 5K race round the Business Park.

In the second of the series of three races, Wendy Walsh, Helen Cartlidge and Zoe Lowe claimed the Hertfordshire County Championship 5K lady veteran’s team first prize.

Walsh and Cartlidge also finished second veteran in their respective age categories while Lowe claimed third in hers.

Graham Smith, Jim King, Graham Foster and Seb Rowe grabbed the third place veteran men’s team prize for the club with Rowe and Mike Martin both achieving new personal bests.

In other race news, Simon Warner and Jenna Pickering completed the NSPCC Milton Keynes 10K in times of 46 minutes dead and one hour eight minutes 38 seconds respectively, whilst Daniel Langton ran the half marathon distance there in 1:28:37.

Doug Hobson ran the Moor Park 10K in 40:34 and Magdalena Petrus completed the Windsor Half Marathon in 2:21:54.

Martin Medforth finished the challenging Castleton Mam Tor fell run in just under one hour and 15 minutes, comprising 10.4km along 380m vertical ascent and descent.

Steve Smith completed the Welsh Mountain Ultra on Saturday in seven hours 57 minutes finishing second in the vets category.