Well Storm Dennis did not seem to create too much of a menace at the North East Road Relay Championships at Hetton Lyons Country Park, where our Female & Male endurance runners turned out in force with some excellent results across the board.
The first race was the Senior Women & Masters Women along with the O/50 Masters Men Relay which was run over 4 legs each runner covering 2.2 mile, our Ladies were well represented with 6 teams in the various categories. Chloe Wellings ran first leg for the Senior Womens “A” Team and really stormed around competing against the men. Chloe came in first with a comfortable lead handing over to Gillian Manford who controlled and increased that lead. Jane Giles took over from Gillian with almost 50 sec in front and Jane handled the situation tremendously well and also maintained the lead to pass onto the youngest member of the team 16 year old Ines Curran who not only came home 1st but had increased the lead to over a minute, a tremendous effort by our Ladies and Team Manager Lisa Atkinson had a big smile. As I say our Ladies were well represented by the following athletes (apologies if I miss anyone) Liz Porteous, Danielle Fraser, Elizabeth O’connor, Faye Buuckton (good to see Faye back) Kim Simpson, Phillippa Paterson, Lisa Atkinson, Maggie Lorraine, Danielle Pizzey, Roseanne Jones, Kristin Abraham, Susie Rankin, Jackie Phillips, Julie Anderson, Gillian Robinson, Angela Kirtley, Liz Medd, Leanne Parkin, Suzy Kelly, & Debra Scott, well done to all. Chloe had the fastest time of the day whilst Gillian & Ines were also in the top 3 fastest times. The club also had an O/50’s Men’s Team running which was great to see and they performed well, that team consisted of Jeremy Armstrong, John McConnell, Bob Stobbs & Davey Leng.
The second race of the day was the Senior Men’s Championship with 6 runners in a team, again each running 2.2 mile, unfortunately our team was hit by late injuries but the “A” team which included 3 young athletes who were only 16 years old ran tremendously well against the senior opposition, to just miss out on medals, in an exciting finish crossing the line in 4th place. the team of Dan Alexander, Conrad Franks (having one of the fastest times) and as said above our 16 year old David Race, Ethan McGlen and Charlie Daley and with the experienced Steven Medd (Senior Captain) bringing the team home, all members contributing to a great team performance. The men had 3 teams competing, with Paul Waller, Kevin Connolly Ross Purcell, Martin Slater, David Dawson & Phil McKeown in the “B” Team and Chris Parkin, James Porteous, Wayse Molavian, Graeme Barham & Andy Smith in the “C” Team.
So the wind and rainy conditions did not deter our runners from turning out, which was a very good days competition, thanks to those who helped on the day(especially John McDonald) and to all our supporters around the course. thanks to the organisers.
On Thursday 13th February Calum Johnson ran in the Armagh International 5k Road race where he ran a personnel best of 14mins-15sec (first 100 runners all finished inside 14mins-45sec), Calum(plus the club) now turn their attention to the National X-country Champ. held at Nottingham on the 22nd February.
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