Leven Las Vegas runners pass on a lap of honour

Davie Hogg and Karen Richards with their Tiree 35 Mile Ultra medals.

Ross Johnston, Bex Oakenfull, Bryan McLaren, Stewart and Lynda English all completed the ten-mile run around the island in what is becoming an annual pilgrimage for LLV.

With even more reason for being excused from doing a well-deserved lap of honour, Karen Richards and Davie Hogg also ran around an island, but in this case it was the rugged Isle of Tiree on the west coast, competing in the 35 mile long Tiree Ultra Marathon, taking in almost every beach on Tiree.

Karen used the event to raise funds for and awareness of MND raising a grand total of £2373 for the charity.

A substantial amount but no less substantial than the progress Karen has made since joining LLV three years ago, literally making great strides from doing her first 5k in 2016, moving on to a 10k, then half marathon and now completing her first ever ultra-marathon, the Tiree 35 miler.

Combined with the money raised by Sandra Cooper in running the Kirkcaldy Parks Half Marathon LLV’s Karen and Sandra have raised over £3,000 in the space of a week for MND.

Up in Glenmore Forest Park near Aviemore Tricia Wallace managed more than just the one lap during the Glenmore 12, where runners repeat a four-mile lap as many times as possible in the space of 12 hours.

The club’s Tricia set a new personal best running a total of 50.6 miles, an excellent result especially after recovering from a broken ankle earlier this year.

Slightly less in distance but still a major challenge, the Great North Run down on Tyneside saw LLV’s John Kay, Lorraine Davie and Malcolm MacTavish joining over 40,000 fellow runners in covering the 13.1 miles from Newcastle to South Shields.

Closer to home many of LLV’s C25k graduates enjoyed their new-found running abilities by taking part in the Cowdenbeath 5k and the Stuart Duncan Forever Memorial 5k in Glenrothes, raising funds for Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland. Other LLV also took part in these events were Nicole Kelly, Heather Ford, Colin Aitken, Dawn Aitken, Kevin McCrabbe, Jenni Johnstone, Angela Wood, Llee Llowe, Graeme Kermath, Claire Doak, Robert Paterson, Cali Ritchie, Dawn Watson, Bex Oakenfull, Bryan McLaren and Sharon McArthur.

With four 5k events in the space of one week there was a bumper crop of LLV personal bests for that distance.

Tricia Bain, Clare Winton, Kevin McCrabbe and Colin Aitken all got one and the magnificent duo of Heather Ford and Dawn Aitken both achieved three consecutive pbs, excellent results for the recent LLV Couch to 5k graduates.