SIX Harwich Runners were among the 3,900-strong field at the London Marathon.

Rob Reason was making his fifth consecutive appearance and, while he couldn’t quite challenge his own club record, he did put in another exceptional performance to post a time of two hours, 38 minutes and four seconds to place 229th overall.

Training had gone well for Robin Brookes and he ran a very mature, even-paced race to record a fully-deserved time of 3h 8m 8s.

Running the marathon has not been Richard Flutter’s biggest challenge in the last year but he managed another tremendous effort to run 12 minutes faster than his previous best marathon time from Gravesend in 2013.

It allowed him to finish in the cool conditions at London in 3h 12m 3s.

Also taking on the marathon distance for the first time was Will Roxby-Clarke.

Showing great consistency for a large portion of the 26.2-mile route, the new father crossed the finish line on the Mall in 4h 7m 32s.

Meanwhile, Ann Piercy was back in London for the third time in four years.

Her time of 4h 18m 20s was her quickest on the famous course, slicing six minutes off her time from last year and placing her a brilliant 53rd in the FV60 category.

Completing the line-up for the black and white vests of Harwich was Liz Smith.

This was the latest in a large number of marathons run by Smith and she finished in another good time of 5h 8m 56s.

While most of the attention was naturally on London, one Harwich Runner ventured over to Spain to tackle the Madrid marathon.

Sebastian Keczmerski completed the course in 3h 39m 18s, beating his one previous attempt at the distance.

Meanwhile, there was a fantastic set of performances at the latest Harwich Parkrun. In favourable weather conditions, 89 runners took part and no fewer than 47 recorded new personal bests (PBs).

There were some familiar faces at the front, as Simon Harrison, Matthew Durrant and Warren Byrd had a flying start that they maintained throughout.

Harrison (18m 27s) finished in pole position for the first time in six appearances, with Matt (18m 50s) beating nemesis Warren (19m 5s) for once.

All ran a new PB and have made massive improvements over the last few weeks.

The ladies were no less competitive.

The top three all finished in quick succession.

Sarah Fletcher, Claire Gooding-Matthews and Laura Taylor managed positions 20th, 21st and 22nd.

First-lady finisher Fletcher ran for the first time in 22m 55s, while Gooding-Matthews managed yet another PB in 23m 3s.

Taylor has only done three Parkruns but made impressive gains on each occasion, finishing in 23m 14s.

Neil Bridges, who first arrived on the scene last September, ran his 5km in 30 minutes.

Jeremy Downs smashed his PB by one minute and 40 seconds.

It will be his 50th Parkrun next week and maybe another PB. Katherine Pleace had her best run for over two months and managed to improve by nearly 30 seconds.

Piercy, who had London the next day, maintained her 100 per cent attendance record at the Harwich Parkrun, while Michelle Greenfield also took part – despite the fact that she was getting married later in the day.