Traffic-enforced warm-up inspires Roddy to smash his personal best

Kenilworth Runners’ Paddy Roddy produced a sensational performance to set the second fastest half-marathon time by a British under-20 athlete this year when he clocked 1hr 12min 52sec at the Robin Hood Half Marathon.
By The Newsroom
Published 5th Oct 2013, 13:09 BST
Paddy RoddyPaddy Roddy
Paddy Roddy

Bettering his previous PB by over three minutes, the 19- year-old overcame a fraught start to the day - traffic forced him to abandon his car and run three miles to the start with minutes to spare - to run a measured and tactically astute race.

With the organisers electing to start runners in waves based on their predicted finishing times, a very small elite field headed off a couple of minutes ahead of the next wave of runners which contained Kenilworth Runners’ Paddy Roddy and Matthew Kingston-Lee, taking part in the half marathon, and Stuart Hopkins, who was tackling the full marathon.

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Roddy paced himself sensibly in the opening miles and pushed on in the third quarter of the race as others began to struggle.

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He received a tow from 9 ½ to 11 ½ miles from Neil Renault, the winner of the marathon in 2:27:08 and pulled off his trademark sprint finish to beat another athlete and come home 20th overall and first under-20.

Dan Nash of East Cornwall, who clocked 1:11:13 in Madrid earlier in the year, is the only British teenager to have run a faster half-marathon than Roddy in 2013.

Behind Roddy, Kingston-Lee, who moved away from the Kenilworth area in August to reside in Grantham, also ran a very strong race, setting year bests at all intermediary distances en route to finishing in 1:17:11 - his second fastest half-marathon time.

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Hopkins, who was last in Nottingham in July competing in the Iron Man distance Outlaw Triathlon, soon realised his hopes of a fast time were not to be and elected to treat the race as a hard training run.

Nonetheless, his time of 2:55:47 was an excellent achievement in blustery conditions and earned him 15th position.

Warwick Wasps’ Richard Broadbent dipped under 1:30, finishing 234th (chip) in 1:29:10, while fellow Warwick resident Marc Weissenberger clocked 1:30:59.

Four Spa Striders also took part, with Greg Harris 403rd in 1:33:19, Clare Hinton fourth W35 in 1:34:10, Peter Schofield 98th M50 in 1:52:08, and Barbara Gunter 3,530th overall in 2:02:09.

The half marathon was won by Aaron Scott of Notts AC in 1:06:54, with Perendis Lekapana the winner of the women’s race in 1:16:44.