The fourth Grand Prix race of the year at Helston produced slower times than usual, with a longer course and biting wind but there were fine individual wins for CAC's Matt Pullen and Jo Friday and a very easy CAC men's team victory.

Matt Pullen wasn't in the mood to wait and took off very early, leading at the mile point by 50metres.  He increased his lead all the way to the finish to clinch a great first Grand Prix race victory by nearly 2 minutes.  A group of four ran most of the race together behind him, until Chris Harry surged away as they reached Culdrose to take 2nd place and Jon Keast hung on for 4th.  Matt Lewis is rapidly getting back in shape after his illness and despite running a very lonely race, finished strongly in 6th, with Jason Pascoe struggling after halfway but hanging in there for 8th.  Paul Chesterfield is getting back into the ‘true religion’ again, after being blinded by Triathlon's bright lycras for a few years and brought the team home in 15th, before any other team had finished three out of their six scoring runners.

Paul Chesterfield, last scorer in the 'A' team

It's becoming very tough to get into the men's A team at the moment and Dave Angilley in 21st and Daniel Murrant in 24th, despite having solid runs, which would have put them well up in any other team, missed out on the first team awards.  The strength in depth continued with Dave Southby, slowly recovering from the Duchy,  in 58th and new recruit Jeff Houghton having a good debut in 69th.  Ken Curtis looked like he was suffering a bit from last week's efforts in the Bath half marathon, coming 71st  and Tony Shaw continued his improvement in 92^nd position.

Quite a few of our runners are still recovering from either the Duchy , the Bath Half, or just a little tired from their heavy training leading up to the London Marathon.  Aaron Rodger ran well in his maiden marathon last month and showed he's recovering well by getting in just ahead of Danny Marsh, one of our Bath boys,  in 97th to Dan's 99th.  Close behind was Graham "Gretel" Storer, also post-Duchy, who left behind poor Viv "Hansel" Bray this time by 10 places, 101st to Viv's 111th. 

CAC regular team member Graham sprints home

Doc. Martin (Todd) was outkicked by Viv by two places and Pete Torr was next in (149^th) but first in the best tan section as usual.  Pete had already run five miles before the race and another six afterwards!  Norris Kington was 3rd Vet.65-69 and 250th overall in another record race field of over 400 runners.

Another 'ever present', Peter using the race as a part of his marathon training

Our Ladies (and everyone else's!) were led in by Jo Friday with a comfortable victory after her exertions at Bath and only seventeen men beat her back to the rugby club.  Suzy Bosustow had another great race to finish 8th lady and 96th overall and Jill Curtis was next in in 298th, very strong and again post-Bath.  The Portreath Coven are all getting fitter by the week and are helping us finish Ladies' teams these days.  Jo Sawyer was looking strong, leading them on the cliffs at Gunwallow but Nikki Coleman came through to take group honours, with Sam Alexander just pipping Jo by a place in 338th and beating over 60 runners.

Nikki and Sam, two thirds of the Portreath Coven in action