A BUSY weekend for Bolton Harriers saw successes on a number of fronts. To add to Tom Carson and Callum Short's medal winning performances in the mini-London Marathon, the club's star middle distance runner was back to winning ways across the Atlantic.

Tom Lancashire cruised to a comfortable victory against quality opposition in the ACC 1500m Championships in Florida. Returning to his favoured distance for the first time this year, the Turton 21 year old outpaced his rivals by a clear three seconds, with a blanket finish for silver and bronze medals being the only real race on show. Lancashire will next tackle the Regional Collegiate Championships, where he is sure to face a sterner test after suffering a surprise defeat last year.

The Bolton 10k featured fine individual performances and a team victory for the home club, with Andy Parker third in 33 minutes, Tony Valentine sixth (33:54) and recent recruit, Czech student Ales Drahokovpil, in ninth (35:07).

Further down the field there was a battle of the generations, with over-55 Eric Ranicar (38:07) outkicked by the youthful legs of U18 Alex Chadwick (38:04), who ran well to win his category.

A former leading contender in the Bolton Marathon, Ranicar has been a leading local veteran athlete for many years, and in yet another comeback from injury picked up second place in the over-55 category. He was followed by another prolific veteran road racer, Ken Fowler, who was organised the race in the past. This time Fowler could concentrate on racing, and he duly picked up third in the over-50 category.

One of the performances of the day however was surely that of Jim McNulty. The 70-year-old was first in his age category, but more impressively left more than half the field in his wake as he completed the 6.2 miles in a fantastic time of 49 minutes 38 seconds to finish 222nd of 566 finishers. Brendan Higgins and Tim Nabosi both ran well to duck under the 40 minute barrier..