Firstly don’t get excited, this isn’t another bottle of wine of cash win by Sharon. In fact we didn’t win anything - I just wanted to share this post that was on the BPTT website…

We are pleased to announce that this month’s Sweatshop Monthly Prize winner is Mark Gratton.

The September winner of the coveted BPTT Monthly Sweatshop prize is Mark Gratton. This prize is awarded to the athlete who has shown long term dedication as well as consistency and improvement over the month.

The competition for the prize was particularly fierce this month and the decision was very difficult. In particular, David Rowe, Kirsty Bangham and Sharon Rowe all put in great performances that in many other months would have scooped the prize. Nevertheless a winner had to emerge, and Mark came out on top.

Mark has run 54 BPTTs since May last year and ran all five races in September. On the first run of the month he matched his previous PB set at the beginning of July. He then went on to beat it by 15 seconds the following week, and a further two seconds a fortnight later. His PB now stands at 18:07. All at BPTT wish him well in his efforts to break the 18 minute barrier.

I really like this news story for a few reasons. Firstly obviously as Sharon and I were in the running (no pun intended!) for this. Secondly we are very good friends with Kirsty and thirdly I’ve started to race more with Mark (regular readers may have noticed that I mentioned him a few weeks ago when I got my most recent personal best time over 5k) and I know first hand how much effort he puts into running time trial.

Well done Mark.