Herne Hill Harriers’ junior star Katie Snowden took a step into the senior ranks and claimed her first title in winning gold at the CAU Intercounties Championship on yet another windy day at Bedford. With the weather again less than conducive to running fast times, Katie took the opportunity to gain more tactical racing experience and beat off the challenge of her elders in a time of 2 minutes 12.12 after comfortably qualifying from her heat earlier in the day. CAU champions have been few and far between over the years and these championships do not usually throw up 17 year old champions (although exceptionally there were 3 this year).
Also at these championships, Idris Ojuriye bounced back from only winning bronze in the Surrey Championship 100m earlier in the month to claim an excellent 4th place in CAU final, recording the fast wind legal time of 10.62 following a wind assisted 10.60 in the semi final. Surrey champion Robert Graham clocked a windy 10.63 in the same semi final race as Idris, but did not contest the final. Sammy Mensah ran in the 200m and showed he is heading back to his best form with good clockings of 21.71 in his heat and 21.57 in the semi final, with the wind in both races being only just over the legal limit. Peter Phillips and Toby Adeyemi competed in the 400m against string opposition, with Peter doing well to reach the semi final, while Paul Oluyemi stuggled with his almost customary run up problems – not helped by the wind – in the long jump.
Elsewhere our in form distance man Chris Busaileh made a huge improvement on his track 5000m PB as he recorded an excellent 14.40.48 in the British Milers Club meeting at Sportcity in Manchester, while Herne Hill Harriers’ veterans claimed 16 medals at the Surrey Veterans Championship at Ewell. Our biggest winners were Brian Shave with 3 golds in the M75 age group, Allan Long, 2 M65 golds, Kwei Sankofa, 2 M50 golds, Mike Mann, 2 M60 golds, while Barbara Mcanas was on the podium no less than 5 times, winning W55 gold in the triple jump, silver in the hammer and bronze in the other 3 throwing events. To complete the HHH collection, Sharon St Luce won a W50 gold medal and Sarah Allen a W45 silver.
In the world of road running, some of our runners rubbed shoulders with the likes of Mo Farah, Jo Pavey and Paula Radcliffe in the BUPA London 10,000, a national championship road race which attracted a huge field of top club and fun runners to the streets of central London. HHH women took the higher placings among the female results, as Cathy Ansell recovered from an over exuberant start to record 36.04 for 19th place, well backed up by Ros Kieran in 32nd place (37.25), Karen Ellison in 58th (39.36) and Katy Yarnall in 75th (41.23). Ben Paviour (76th man in 32.40), Sarwar Khan (108th man in 33.28) and Tim Elsey (123rd man in 34.12) were the HHH men’s scoring team trio. Full team results are available here:
- UKA Men’s Championship Team Results
- UKA Women’s Championship Team Results
- UKA Men’s Individual Championship Results
- UKA Women’s Individual Championship Results
Finally, second claim HHH member James McMullan, who will compete for the HHH men’s British Athletics League team in Exeter this coming weekend became the first Surrey winner of the CAU Intercounties Fell Running Championship at Broughton Heights in the Scottish Borders, with another second claim man Chris Smith just over a minute behind James winning the silver medal representing Middlesex. Yet another HHH second claim runner, Orlando Edwards placed 5th.
Results from Surrey athletes at the CAU championship are at this link:
Results from the Surrey Veterans championship are at this link:
Results from the BUPA London 10,000 are at this link:
Geoff