Team leader Tony Velterop, led Claire and Justin Ashby, Becky and Ian Robson, Charles Edward Keen, Bert Dykema and John Ball in the bid for the Mighty Green Team to beat the previous year’s total of lengths swum in the Swimathon event that was held on the first Saturday of October, writes Hamish Spence.

With no extensive training programme for the team members and with very little swimming done all summer, the team of eight got on with the task at hand.

They were hopeful of beating the previous running club record of just over 130 lengths in the allocated hour of swimming. They had a brief team talk at the start, primarily consisting of each of them trying to remember the number which had been allocated to each in the team – one to eight!

Also, despite all the bravado and heroic talk of swimming in Mighty Green mankinis and bikinis, it was agreed that being realistic was much more functional, indeed more sensible and very fortunate for the spectators and all others involved! The whole team worked very hard and the Mighty Green spirit was not quashed, despite the fact that they were all flagging somewhat by the end.

The team felt it was all worth the effort especially when they learnt that they had reached 149 lengths and gained a new running club record.

Also, the Mighty Green team discovered that they finished in third place out of the 25 teams that took part.

? In SRC running news, Abbi Lee was in action at the Bournemouth Marathon on the first Saturday of October. Abbi made very good time of 4:51:18.