Les Croupiers Running Club Forum

After a beautiful day, it's often interesting to look back at an event.
Today (1 September) was the 34th edition of the Cardiff 10km.
It started in 1986 and has been held in either September or October ever since.
First up, congratulations to Graham Finlayson and the organising team. It went very well.
I do like to give credit where it's due, and as Graham knows only too well, I will tell him if anything goes wrong (like the delay of last year's start due to late entries). But no such problems today.
A ceiling of 7600 entries was reached, and there were over 6100 finishers. I think that's about the maximum this event can accommodate in its current format. There were 500 more finishers than last year, and 5 years ago the number was 3625.
Les Croupiers played the usual numbers game (i.e. biggest club representation). The number of club finishers since 2014: 2014 - 72; 2015 - 94; 2016 - 82; 2017 - 105; 2018 - 93; 2019 - 100.
Road races today are often accused of not being of the same standard as years ago.
When I first ran this race in 1988, I was 9th in 30:54. That time would have placed me 11th today. Having said that, there were only 531 finishers in 1988, which was won by Nigel Adams (Swansea) in 29:18. Today's winner, Jake Smith (Cardiff) ran 29:30.
Anyway, enough about the runners. Many of you were out on the course, supporting and helping, so thank you all for making it another memorable day out.