I finished second in the Oldbury 10 today, Scott H. won with after a great middle part of the race, I'm pleased with my time, which is one of the fastest M40 times this year, although the rankings have a habit of changing when you're doing well. Sian was second too, Jane Wassall won, but Sian wasn't far behind, and is building well for the winter season. After the first mile or so, when Oli looked like he could run forever, and there was a leading group, I eventually ended up with a small lead at halfway. I've run with Scott often enough, and he does have a better middle part of the race than me, but I was still impressed by how well he surged away from around six to eight miles, and he had a lead of more than 10 secs coming into the last mile. I usually can get muster a fast finish, and with the clock ticking upto 53 mins, I had lots of incentive to finish as fast as possible. I'm not sure how many faster M40 times there will be at the end of the year, but it was certainly worth sprinting as hard as I could for the last few yards. Oli's got his mind on greater duathlon things, he was looking comfortable as he finished in third. John Duncan and Mike Blackmore were 6th and 7th, and I reckon that ranks John 6th M50 - but who knows with rankings. Gareth completed the winning B&W team, so thanks to him for his support and doubtless he'll be going extra well at training. Jon Goodland, with the help of long socks, and Steve Mosley finding some M40 form finished each side of the hour mark respectively. There were too many good local performances in the excellent cool still weather to list everybody. ...and I was chatting to Scott afterwards, and he is now well practised at leading the Coventry line, as some of the stars get a little older, but they'll have to do without him at the National 6 Stage as he's running the Coventry Half. Jane Wassall used to live in the area, and won the Avon county medal by just over 30 secs from Sian. Aileen is getting back into the swing of things, and set off in the lead, but Jane and Sian have a lot of training and racing form and prevailed as the race went on. ...and aren't duathletes just unbelievable - Oli Mott decided that he would take a longer route home as he didn't cycle far enough on the way out from Bristol to Thornbury, and Aileen led the women's race for the first few miles, and was straight on the bike afterwards when most of us runners were hardly able to walk. Good luck to them in Virginia