ON a grey and damp Sunday morning, Nick Willetts set a good steady pace and maintained it to the finish, whittling nearly six minutes off his previous best at the Gosport half marathon to record a fine 1hour 30min 3sec.

Andy Budgell, still recovering from a big marathon improvement last month, was timed over 13 miles at 1.30.53 and he was followed by Mike White with 1.36.18 and Craig Murphy 1.42.31, the quartet completing the men’s A team.

Jane Whiteley was best of the club’s ladies on the day, she too clocking a personal best with 1.49.05 and, with Liz Roberts 1.53.21 and Jacqueline Chlebowski 2.02.06, ensured that the Salisbury club put points on the board for inclusion in the league tables.

Among the field of 1,600, Andy Robbins was the club’s only other finisher with a time of 1.57.44.

Now follows an interval of two months before the road league resumes with the fiercely-contested Stubbington 10k in mid- January, and the club remains optimistic that its squad of elite runners, male and female, will be back to full strength to contest the seven scoring fixtures still to come this season.

Meanwhile at Brighton, Alex Mundell ran only her second road 10k, slicing a minute and a half from her previous best with 40min 43sec, a run that placed her first in the under 20s’ age group.

At Bath, in a multi-terrain race over the same distance, Shaun Gibson and Sue Hazzard completed the course in 51.43 and 72.00 respectively.