CLUBNEWS

25^th MARCH, 2008

15^th March – Inter-Counties’ Cross-Country Championships, Nottingham

STRONG CLUB CONTRIBUTION TOPPED BY VEST FOR JAMES

Overall, Yorkshire had a good day at Woollaton Park, even though a combination of late injuries and drop-outs meant that for the first time in years the county failed to finish a Senior Men’s team. Elsewhere, however, there were two titles, two Silvers and a Bronze, and Leeds City had a substantial share in three of the medals. Ironically, however, the best achievement by a Club member had nothing to do with Yorkshire.

Representing his native Warwickshire, James Walsh matched his excellent National run precisely by finishing sixth once again, and on the strength of that has been selected for the Great Britain team for the World Championships in Edinburgh at the end of the month. Clubnews passes on its best wishes from everybody to the first male Leeds City athlete to represent Great Britain in this event (and before the elder brethren start taking me to task, when Mike Baxter and Dave Slater ran in the ‘70s they were representing England.) It could very easily have been two Club members as well; the first eight were selected, and the ninth man named as reserve – and Dave Webb finished 10^th, two seconds adrift of 8^th and in the same time as Ian Hudspith! Ouch!!!

Four Club members came home with a C.A.U. medal to show for their efforts. Geoff Belcher (34^th) was fourth counter in the winning Under-17 team, with a lot better run than in the National; while the Silvers gained by the Under-20 squad included a solid contributing by James Wilkinson in 18^th place and Mike Salter in 47^th. The Under-15 Lads, who finished third, were led home by Mike Wood in 20^th, but The Scribe can’t help asking if it might not be a good idea for Yorkshire to leave one place open until as close to the closing date as possible; the team didn’t include Elliot Todd (for the good reason that, being ill at the time, he didn’t finish the Yorkshire Championship), and the way he’s been going his presence could have made a difference to the colour of the medal.

There were also a few other people out representing ‘foreign parts.’ Susan Partridge, representing the West of Scotland, finished 33^rd in the Senior Women’s race, but both Simon Deakin (Lancs.) and Alan Buckley (Notts.) didn’t finish.

16^th March – Ackworth half-Marathon (incorporating Yorkshire Championships)

HOT STUFF FROM TEAM IN THE FREEZING EAST

On a morning with strong winds and conditions suitable for causing disquiet among metallic anthropoids, it wasn’t too surprising that Personal Bests were at a premium at Ackworth; it’s not often that the likes of race winner Dominic Bannister do the first ten miles of a ’Half’ in a woolly hat! In those circumstances Chris Birchall’s run in second place, only 25 seconds down on his best as a Leeds City member (67.25) was a rare old run, especially as (according to information received from Roger Norton) he chose to ‘mix it’ with Dom early on, had a bit of a wilt at about eight and then came back like a train. Darran Bilton (68.37) and Adam Osborne (70.49) weren’t as close to their bests, but in 7^th and 8^th they gave Chris the backing for a most emphatic team win; in fact the lads were so far ahead of the opposition that they could have counted Josh Whitehead (whose 73.08 in 15^th place was probably, apart from Chris’, the run of the day) as well as the first three and still have won by 20 points.

The other six finishers didn’t do badly either. Trevor Clough placed second in the Over-50s in 81.26, pretty fair under the circumstances; Simon Hill’s 88.36 (115^th) was close enough to his Brass Monkey time to confirm the fact that the latter wasn’t a fluke; and Jennie Guard (144^th, 90.52) looks to be getting back into it after her injuries. There was another ‘category pot’ for Julie Barley, third among the Over-40 Ladies (160^th, 91.56), and two good runs by Over-55 members in Chris Corcoran (who celebrated ‘turning’ another age-group with 93.32 in 178^th) and Geoff Pitter (324^th in a solid 103.56).

A VEST FOR ADAM AS WELL

The Club team for the Northern 12-Stage Relay is going to be weakened by one – but for the best of all possible reasons – as Adam Grice will be missing; he’ll be in France instead, representing Great Britain in the World Students’ Cross-Country Championships at Mauquenchy. Clubnews passes on the Club’s congratulations.

EVERYTHING ELSE INCLUDING THE LORD MAYOR’S SHOW

Four medals, three Club records, and a share in a British vets’ record – that was the tally from the trio of Club members who took part in a week of indoor competition at the World M****rs’ Championships at Clermont-Ferrand just before Easter. Best medal tally went, unsurprisingly, to Tony Bowman in the Over-70s, though he had to produce season’s bests of 29.07 and 10.34 to claim his two Silvers over 200m and 60m Hurdles; he also placed 6^th in the 60m with 8.87. Hazel Barker was out of the medals, but can hardly be dissatisfied with a Club Over-45 record in fifth place in the Over-45 Pentathlon, particularly when three of the marks were better than those of her previous record and one, the 60m Hurdles (10.06), was another Club mark. For the record, her others were 1.45, 4.26, 9.25 and 3.19.32.

Pride of place, however, has to go to Steve Linsell – ‘only’ a Bronze medal, having missed Silver on countback, but a share in the British Indoor Over-40 High Jump record with 1.90. Moreover, the jump itself was remarkable, as Steve “lost confidence in my full run-up, which had been going well in training, after a failure at 1.84” and did the medal-winning effort off five strides! He claims that it equals “my best ever height off five strides of years ago.” You sometimes get the impression that Steve could get over 1.80 blindfold at midnight in a cow-pasture with the cows in the way!

The Scribe was a little tardy in getting hold of the results of the British Universities’ Indoor Championships at Sheffield (as usual, like the proverbial workman, he blames the internet!), but is now able to report a couple of medals, both Bronze, for members. Matt Hudson was third over 60m Hurdles, continuing a season of remarkable consistency by running 8.22 (he’s produced between 8.20 and 8.23 on about six separate occasions this season), while Alice Simpson edged her PB in the Shot by a couple of centimetres with 12.21 in occupying the same position. There were also good performances from Ashley Little, who placed 8^th in a big Triple Jump field (10.38, pretty good off the somewhat ‘flat’ Sheffield runway) and Naana Adusei, who ran a quick 26.79 without getting beyond the 200m Semis. Anthony Timms, however, after qualifying for the Long Jump Final with a competent 6.59, didn’t take part, presumably due to a ‘niggle.’

A couple of members travelled to Sheffield on March 16^th for the Lord Mayor’s 10k Race, and went reasonably well. Scott Mitchell nipped across from Sunny Scunny to finish 8^th (33.55), and just get ahead (in the last 100 yards, if The Scribe knows Scott) of Sean Cotter, who took the first over-40 ‘pot’ three seconds behind, clearly having put his Hong Kong traumas behind him. One point of interest to the Senior Harriers was the athlete in third place – Kevin Farrow, who appears to have moved from Derby to Notts. A.C.!

Some folk celebrate Good Friday as a public or religious holiday; Salford Harriers celebrate it by staging the Salford 10k Race (successor to the previous ‘Seven’), and Simon Deakin celebrated by finishing second in it. Times were clearly affected by the cold and winds, but the fact that he was about a minute ahead of Newham’s Ian Grime and half a minute behind Sale’s Gareth Raven in 31.31 suggests that Simon had a good run, but Gareth had a better one.

An e-mail report received this week suggested at first that Gavin Chatterton is well on the way to becoming the Club’s most prolific disaster-area! After going a bit off-course at Marsden, he attempted thee Guiseley Gallop on Easter Sunday, and managed an apparently even more spectacular navigational error. Having been dropped by Ian Fisher (who would probably have won easily anyway) the leading group, which included “Alex Davy, myself and few others from Pudsey & Ilkley, all followed an arrow pointing uphill towards the end of the first lap . So, up we went, up, up and still up before bizarrely joining the field in what I would estimate to be about 150s -170s. After we had all sworn a lot as we tried to work out what the hell was going on we shuffled back into action. Eventually Alex got back to 41st (40.47), I got to 63^rd (42.14) and Ian Fisher (plainly the only leader not to have gone wrong) won by nearly 5 minutes. Celia de Maria (38th, 40.25, second lady) was pleased to beat me by around two minutes, although she admitted she thought something was wrong when Tim Midgley from Bingley swept past her near the finish.”

However, a call to Skyrac’s Peter Rawnsley revealed that there was more to the story than bad navigation. ‘Romper,’ who was in charge of the event, found himself dealing with the second blizzard of this year’s White Easter, and had to alter the course at the last minute to cut out a potentially dangerous road section. What he didn’t find out until later was that somebody else was not only making unauthorized alterations to the course by shifting the marking arrows in the woods (one arrow was taken off a stick and deliberately turned round) but was pretending to be a marshal and misdirecting people. Now this has been revealed, Gavin can perhaps worry a bit less about his navigational skills.

Talking of navigation, mermaids were supposed to lure mariners on to rocks’ the Mermaid 10k lured Aidan Adams to Marske-by-the-Sea on Good Friday, and for from hitting any rocks he finished a clear second in 33.42.

The Scribe finally got hold of the second day’s results from Dortmund (see last edition – Thanks, Mrs Carr!) and picked up a few further PBs and another Club record – Elliot Hurley followed his Under-13 60m on Saturday with a scorching 10.3 over 75m on the Sunday. Elliot’s little brother Louis also made a mark with a 3.81 Long Jump that’s well up the Under-11 List, while Gemma Kier raised her High Jump best to 1.20 and won her 800 by a thumping great five seconds in 2.48.87, and Alyssia Carr added about eight inches to her best Long Jump (and at just over 11 that’s a lot) with 4.33. Another winner in the older age-groups, was Jack Mosley, whose 7.5 60m now stands with only one Club time ahead of it – brother Tom’s, needless to say! Jack Gape also brought home a couple of PBs (1.20 High and 4.07 Long), Charlie Moore made a mark over 1000 (3.30.29), Harry Ansell-Wood did god things among the Under-11s (1.15 and 3.56), Millie Parkinson extended her Long Jump to 3.65 and ran a sound 75 (11.2), and Fran Coldwell had an excellent pair of performances over 60 (8.0) and 300 (44.22).

Getting results of the Reebok Manchester Open Meetings is proving difficult as they seem to come up very slowly on to the Sale Harriers’ website. An e-mail revealed that Connor Morley had picked up two PBs in the Under-15 events (9.02 60m, 1.40 High Jump) but if anybody else went and hasn’t got a mention – sorry! It’ll be put right if information is passed on.