Mark Williams continued his dominance of the local distance running scene with a convincing victory in the second event of the New Balance Reservoir Series over 12km at Aberdeen yesterday.
The 34-year-old teacher, who ran 44 minutes and 31 seconds for victory, was delighted with his latest win, but a number of the 350 runners were disappointed to arrive back at the finish line only to find that their vehicles had been posted with parking tickets.
Most local race venues have only a limited amount of public parking available, particularly those staged in country parks. The Aberdeen race offers no parking at all, and so many runners chose to park their cars on Aberdeen Reservoir Road, a dead-end street.
An official from the event organisers said police officers arrived before the start of the race and confirmed that no action would be taken against the drivers of the cars parked outside the race venue, as they were not causing an obstruction. Another group of police officers arrived after the race was in progress and ticketed the cars parked on the road.
'It's all rather strange as the first group of police officers said it was OK to park the cars there, but then the second group arrived a little later and said the cars had to be moved or ticketed,' said the official, who declined to be named. 'As most of the owners were at that time out on the course, it was impossible to have their cars moved.'
Williams, who was the leading local finisher in the Hong Kong marathon two weeks ago, is now focusing his training on the Queenstown Marathon in New Zealand in early April. Yesterday's result was a confidence booster after illness and injury nearly derailed his marathon performance of a fortnight ago.
