18-year-old Shaw was given the honour of wearing race number 1 for his first ever half marathon. Despite starting off a little faster than planned, he managed to maintain an incredible pace to break the world record in the PSLD category (runners with learning difficulties) by over a minute and five seconds. James finished in overall 33rd place out of 3370 finishers in an incredible time of 77 min 13 sec.

Rochdale Harriers typically run over 15 races per year, much of which is off road. Surprisingly, however, about half of the 10 athletes had not ran a half marathon before.

Tracey Smith agreed to take the place of an injured runner only a few weeks before. Despite little time to prepare, Tracey was the third counter for the Rochdale ladies team, racing home in 115 min 56 sec. Also in the ladies team were Huma Rahman (5th lady in the female veteran 35 category, 92 min 05 sec) and Anna Blomfield (13th lady in the female veteran 40 category, new p.b. 97 min 08 sec). The ladies team finished in overall 11th place.

The men’s team finished in 18th place thanks to impressive performances from Kris Robinson (78:26), Andrew Pilling (80:31), Mark Walker (94:40) and Chris Telford (96.36). The men’s team would have finished higher but for Dave Bentley’s excellent result (86:18) being overlooked in the final team rankings.

Also running at the event were John Mayall who, thanks to winter cross country and weekly speedwork sessions at the Harriers, sliced 7 minutes of his 2005 Wilmslow result to finish with a new p.b. of 97:08. Duncan Whitehead in his first ever half marathon completed the course in 110:31.

And Amir Khan slashed 18 minutes of his 2005 time to finish in 86:53, raising a large sum for charity in the process.

Race commentary on the day was provided by Rochdale’s Andy O’Sullivan MBE.

Pictures below thanks to Javed Hussain.  More pictures here.