Herne Hill Harriers round-up: Grgec betters half-marathon PB with breakthrough run in Berlin
The 31-year-old finished sixth female in a world-class field behind three Ethiopians and two Kenyan athletes.
She bettered her PB by exactly a minute to now see her clearly at the top of the New Zealand women’s rankings at 5km, 10km and half-marathon for the year to date.
Grgec’s time is a new Harriers club women’s record and she also improved the Surrey women’s record previously held by Great Britain Olympic marathon runner Rose Harvey by 50 seconds to now bring this below the 70 minutes landmark.
Grgec will seek to build on her strong races so far this year with further improvements and an aim to represent her country at the 2025 World Athletics Road Running Championships in a few months.
Some of her male club-mates also made the most of the trip to Germany to produce good results of their own.
Australian Brandon Dewar, Grgec’s fiance, ran his second fastest time with 67:02 in 40th place, followed in 44th by Morgan Roberts, who continues to shave his PB with his 67:27 clocking.
Matt Cartwright was 154th with a PB of 72:49, Seve Loudon 347th in 77:20 and Adam Westbury 685th in a personal best of 81:07.
Elsewhere on Sunday, U20 Harry Bell ran a PB of 14.43 at the Bristol Track Club 5km Road Races, while at the Vienna Marathon W40 Karen Ellison came away with a PB of 3:13:36 and M55 Andrew Simms ran 3:34:03.
PICTURE: GRAHAM SMITH