Many congratulations to elite athlete, Charlotte Purdue, (student at Farnborough Hill from 2002-2007), who ran her first London Marathon on 24 April 2016 and was the third GB woman at the finish with a time of 2:32:48. Charlotte discovered her talent for running during her time at Farnborough Hill and we have been following her progress with interest ever since. She was extremely successful over a range of distances at junior level and in 2010 was European Junior Cross Country Champion and 5000m Silver Medallist. She has always been good at long distances and has been waiting to be old enough to tackle the challenge of the marathon. Recent training has included a period in Australia and this has helped her to prepare her for the London Marathon.
Charlotte's time was just outside the qualifying time for this Summer's Olympics which may mean she misses out this time but she is sanguine: "The race was great and I loved it. I wanted to get the Rio qualifying time but I missed it. I'm only 24 and the others are 8-12 years older."
Ten years ago, Charlotte came first in the Mini London Marathon, the official British Athletics 3-mile road championships for young athletes aged between 11 and 17. We were delighted to hear that Lucy (11 Alpha) (pictured right) is following in her footsteps, having come second in this year's race in the under-17 age group with a fantastic time of 16:23, just 6 seconds behind the winning runner.
We are immensely proud of the achievements of these hard-working and talented athletes and look forward to hearing more about them as their running progresses.