PETE’S POST – MARCH 2023
This month I spent a wonderful couple of hours in the company of Roger Summerfield. Roger was a member of Coleridge A.C., prior to the amalgamation with Cambridge City A.C. to form Cambridge and Coleridge back in 1962. Roger was on the original committee of the club.
He was also a high caliber sprinter who won the County 220yds. 9 years in a row! The picture shows him winning the 440 yds, at the 1964 Eastern Counties Championship at Norwich. The other two runners pictured, Sid Miller, second, and Jim Birnie, 3rd, were also from C&C, and all three were under 52 seconds. Roger also won the 100 and 220 yrds., at the these Championships, making it three years in a row that he won this triple! (1962, ’63, and ’64). On a National level, C&C were achieving top 4 finishes in the AAA 110 and 440 relays around this time.
Roger told me how he can still visualise those races, and still recall the excitement and emotions of those days.
He also told me about the camaraderie between him and his fellow athletes, and how he once bumped into a group of old rivals from Norwich, years later, and immediately the banter between them kicked-off once again!
This is the wonder of what athletics can do. Taking part can do amazing things for your physical and mental wellbeing, but it can also provide you with a lifetime of happy memories and friendships.
The month of March sees the final race of the Frostbite Winter League series. Currently C&C are laying in 2nd place out of 16 teams. This is brilliant, congratulations to all those that have taken part so far. Let’s have another great turn-out for that last match at Huntingdon on 12th and see where it takes us. Second place would be by far the best finishing position for the club in a decade!
Following the recent Saville Marathon, C&C has two athletes ranked TOP in the UK for their categories over the 26.2 mile distance. Sarah Wightman ran 3 hrs.. 2 mins. to take top spot in the UK rankings for her Age Group, and Norman Shreeve ran an amazing 2:18 to currently lay 4th in the UK marathon rankings overall, and 1st in his Age Group. Congratulations both, it’s fantastic to see the the words “Cambridge and Coleridge” right at the top of the lists.
So here we are, C&C was successful back in the early 1960’s, and 61 years later, we go on. All that time the club has been kept going through the hard work and dedication of people prepared to volunteer their time to help the club to keep moving on, so that we are here for others now, and into the future.
On this subject, the club is still calling for volunteers for Officials. These are such key roles, track meetings cannot run without them. Please do consider getting in touch and helping the club in this area. Once trained, at the club’s expense, you will be part of our valued and friendly team that play such an important role.
On April 2nd we have our Cambourne 10k, thanks to everyone who has volunteered to help with that. We need to make it a great day, so please do what you can to support it, either by helping on the day, running it yourself, or encouraging others to run. If you do Park Runs for example, please tell people about it! An Olympic torch from London 2012 will be there on the day, so an excellent photo opportunity!
The Cambridge Half Marathon is also coming up very soon. Good luck to all C&C runners taking part. Thanks as well to the members that have volunteered to cover the drinks station around mile 9, I love it that C&C are supporting a local event in this way. It should give our runners a real lift to see you as they enter the final stages too!
Good luck with your training and competing this month. Wear the colours with pride. Cambridge and Coleridge is a club with an illustrious history, but the story is far, from over, there are many, many more chapters to be written yet.