Herne Hill Harriers girls teams got off to a great start in their Surrey Girls league campaign winning two age groups and narrowly coming second in the third age group.
We won both the U15 and U17 girls team races – in the under 15 girls Skye O’Shaunessey had her best ever run for an excellent third place closely followed in fourth by Victoria Picken who had a very encouraging run after missing all the summer through injury. Georgie Hay also returning from injury was seventh and then crucially Clemmie Hilliare closed the team in 25th place. We won from Guildford & Godlaming and look sure to improve during the winter.
In the under 17s we won the match through good packing in the middle of the field : Billie Barbour enjoyed the firm conditions to finish sixth in 18.03 and was followed by Francesca Meade in 8th, Maysie Hillare 9th, Izzy Broughton in 10th . Zoe Yibowei & Leila Abandah also finished the race to help the team narrowly beat Guildford again.
Breagha Campbell took a commanding early lead over old rival Niamh Brown and dominated the Under 13 girls race to win by over 200m, Saskia Millard had a great race with Niamh & was only four seconds behind in third. Behind there was drama in the final 400m as Izzie Lamport-Went who was contesting seventh place fell with 200m to go and turnt her ankle, with Izzie unable to continue Bozena Fanner in her first cross country race finished eleventh and Ella Newton was 20th to be our final scorer . We finished a close second to Dorking & Mole Valley but with encouragingly nine girls running should again improve as the winter season progresses.
Merhawi Yemani won the Pulse 3km road race in Hyde Park on Sunday for the second year running, also winning agegroups were Breagha Campbell & Sam Cohen whilst Victoria Picken & Paul Burgess were second in their agegroups. Over thirty young athletes from Herne Hill Harriers, several who had run in the cross country races the day before, ran in this popular event which is held in conjunction with the Royal Parks half marathon.