For long standing residents of Hook the sight of Charlotte Purdue’s blonde head bopping past the window at speed became the norm.
That blonde head got a little higher and a whizzed by a little faster year on year until the head of Charlotte was no longer seen speeding past your window on a weekend morning, but don’t fret, you can usually catch her running on TV nowadays.
Yes, that is the rather long-winded way of introducing Hook’s marathon runner Charlotte Purdue’s recent success. The local lady has had Hook residents cheering at their television sets of late with her phenomenal performances in both the Great North Run and the London Marathon. Charlotte ran an outstanding race to finish third in the Great North Run which led to fanfare among the community Facebook pages but it was the terrific tenth place finish in the most famous of the UK races, the London Marathon, that saw people calling for her to be given the “the keys to the village”.
This is far from Charlotte’s first success and the marvellous marathoner has been a known face locally for the best part of the last twenty years ever since she joined the Farnham and District Athletic Club around the age of thirteen. A prolific junior runner, Purdue picked up various gold medals at races all around the world and still holds the UK junior record for the ten thousand meters with a time of 32:36.75 minutes.
Her recent London Marathon race was her personal best and has moved the local lady to third place on the British all-time list, so what are we waiting for, give her the keys to the village!