Nine North Norfolk Beach Runners joined the field of more than 1.500 for Sunday's GEAR Grand East Anglia Run at King's Lynn.

Chris Merrylees, apparently fully recovered from the London Marathon, ran a terrific race to finish 17th in an excellent time of 34:48 yet found himself finishing more than four minutes behind the Ethiopian winner, Tadele Geremew.

The second Beach Runner across the line was Lynton Battrick, making a welcome return to road running after a gap of three years. Despite the long lay-off, Lynton finished 60th in an excellent time of 38:17. Another Beach Runner making a comeback was Ian Jarvis who a year or two ago was one of the Cromer Club's most prolific runners.

Jim Hayes turned in an excellent performance to finish 163rd but found the competition too stiff amongst the Over 60s to get amongst the prizes while Eddie Carman found it tough going in the warm conditions but still clocked an excellent 43:44 for a top 200 placing.

A little further back Derek Sadler ran well to clock 46:43 whilst new members Martin Smith and Matthew Baker both did well in their first road race in Beach Runner colours to finish 345th and 424th repectively. Also running was the rejuvenated Ross Haddow, a regular attender at the popular Saturday morning Park Runs in Sheringham.

Further afield in Kent, three Beach Runners took part in the predominantly off-road Bewl Water Marathon. Colin Stark continued with the tremendous form that took him to a sub 2:50 time in London finishing a superb fourth in the field of nearly 200 with a time of 3:10:28.

Colin had a long wait for his travelling companions to finish as Merle Riseborough and Tony Money finished more than an hour later, 73rd and 78th respectively but all three runners could be proud of their performances.