HELENSBURGH Athletics Club have had a successful few weeks with eye-catching times clocked across the country and in the USA.

In a race close to home, Caroline Johnston was undeterred by the many hills in Callendar and made light work of the challenging 10k course to finish in one hour three minutes.

With marathon season drawing to a close, a number of runners have been trying to squeeze out late season PBs. Club stalwart Alistair Wylie travelled to America to compete in the Mohawk Hudson Marathon, where he battled hot conditions to clock an impressive time of 3:33.18 putting him third in his age category of V60 men.

Staying stateside the running dream team of Gail Thomas and Sybil Kennedy took on the iconic Chicago Marathon.

Both ladies are experienced marathon runners and cantered round the course in four hours 12 minutes and four hours six minutes respectively

For some athletes 26 miles just isn’t far enough and among these are local runners Karl Giarchi and Madeline Robinson.

Taking on the inaugural 50km Dunoon Ultra, both athletes battled the relentless hills to take podium places. Karl finished eighth overall in five hours 10 minutes and won second place in his age category.

Coming in just ahead of him however was Madeline with an impressive time of five hours three minutes, allowing her not only to win the woman’s race but take third overall.

Reflecting on recent races, club president Laura Johnstone said: “The club has grown in diversity over this year with members taking part in every distance from 5km to 100-mile events, road races to extreme triathlon. The growth of mass participation events has left members spoilt for choice and we are definitely seeing a wider variety of events being entered.”

Next month a number of HAAC seniors are participating in the last 10k of the season – the Jimmy Irvine 10k.

Anybody interested in joining the club can make contact through it’s Facebook page Helensburgh AAC or pop down to the clubhouse in the old Academy grounds on a Tuesday at 7.20pm.