Several Horwich Harriers took on a broad range of events on another busy week for the club.

The Rusland Show in the Lake District is one of those traditional events that involves both fierce and fun competition and Suzanne Budgett’s exploits sum that up as she took part in the full range of races on offer.

She warmed up for the five-mile fell race with the 200m race and the 1.75-mile lung-busting fell race. She also did the ladies’ egg-and-spoon race and was happy she finished without dropping the egg. She reflected on the experience as “one of those numerous occasions where your head still thinks you can do it all but your body says otherwise”.

On the edge of the Lake District, it was the latest round of the English and British Fell Championships at Sedbergh Hills, where Horwich had two representatives.

Dan Gilbert had a typically battling run to finish 133rd out of 353 starters in a time of 2hrs 51mins 55secs. He set off fast in the first section of the race to Arant Haw, then reigned back his pace up to Bowderdale before going again and then easing back for the finish. The 14-mile, 6,000-feet ascent race was all the tougher for alternately traversing tricky narrow paths and muddy ground. Alison Mort ran the race in a contrasting style, maintaining a steady pace throughout, at each stage always within a group of 12 runners to finish 316th. She is having another great season, currently holding second place in the F40 category in the Run The Moors Grand Prix and has a real chance to take a podium place in the overall women’s series.

Aidan McKenna is one of the Harriers emerging from the junior squad to senior status and on Sunday evening he ran his second 10k race at Run The Lights in Blackpool. His time of 44:43 took over a minute and a half off his previous personal-best time. The promenade race features headwind and tailwind legs and McKenna’s performance showed his application in training is paying off this year as he finished 80th out of 928 runners.

The Pendle and Burnley Grand Prix is a series of 13 races encompassing road, trail and fell. This year it concluded on Friday with a splendid presentation evening at Burnley FC’s hospitality lounge where David Barnes was pleased to receive his M65 series second place prize from Blackburn Harriers’ Ben Fish, who had entertained the audience with amusing tales under interview by John Roche - the series organiser. Paul Boardman was inducted into the Grand Prix Grand Slam table having this year completed all 13 races and just missing out on a podium series category place. He showed his mettle though at the Piethorne fell race on Sunday where he finished the 6.2-mile course in 51:30 for 28th place and second out of 22 M60 runners.

Horwich runners were at nine different parkrun courses last weekend and there were several ‘firsts’ recorded. At Worsley Woods Robert Seddon was first home and at Bolton, Marcus Taylor was second overall and first VM50-54.

Other age-category ‘firsts’ included at Haigh Woodland, Richard O’Reilly (VM55-59), Chris Charnley (VM45-49), Sophie Orrell (JW11-14), Mary White (VW70-74); and Leo Orrell ran his first ever parkrun in 72nd place.

Elsewhere, Tony Hesketh was first VM75-79 at Philips Park on his first visit to that parkrun, while Graham Schofield was first VM65-69 at Burnley. At Pennington Flash, Grace Freary was first JW11-14 and Michael Crook was first VM75-79, while Jason and Janet Middleton continued their parkrun tour, this time visiting Wilmslow. The best age-graded result this week was from Rob Jackson with 84.05 per cent at Peel, where he was first VM55-59 and Amelia Shan was first JW11-14.