Herne Hill Harriers’ Kristal Awuah and Katie Snowden followed up their medal winning performances at the British Championship as each squeezed some more races into last week taking opportunities in this truncated athletics season.
British 100m silver medalist Awuah jetted off to Europe in pursuit of improving on her fastest time at this distance. Her first port of call was Rovereto in Italy where on Tuesday she clocked a strong 11.47 seconds placing second in an international field.
She then moved on to Poznań in Poland where she ran two 100m races on Friday evening, with both runs producing winning performances in 11.44 and 11.37. The latter, although fractionally slower than her championship final time was within the allowable wind gauge reading, so is now her official season’s best time for 2020 to date.
Awuah then raced on Sunday in Germany in the highest quality meet she has attended this summer as she placed a very good third in 11.44 at the ISTAF meeting in Berlin behind two world ranked women at an event which saw one or two world leading performances for the year so far.
Snowden also enjoyed a busy few days as she brought her short track season to a close after her British 1500m bronze. Racing closer to home, she won the elite women’s race at Aldershot on Thursday evening where she was given 4:10.1, less than half a second outside her fastest time for this year. Snowden recorded a clear victory ahead of British Championships 5000m bronze medalist Amelia Quirk who was over four seconds in her wake.
Then on Saturday at at the SLH open races at Coulsdon, a highlight of the meeting was an impressive battle which saw seeing prodigious Under 15 boy Zac Crowther’s 800m PB run of 2:01.74 just hold off senior women’s club record holder Snowden in a close and exciting race. The two Herne Hill athletes pushed each other all the way and Snowden was rewarded with her season’s best time 2:01.91 and finished a full two seconds ahead of Ellie Baker who had won a bronze medal at the British Championship last week at this race distance.
This latest series of races sees Awuah ranked third Senior woman in the UK at 100m, Crowther is fourth Under 15 boy at 800m, while Snowden is currently eighth Senior woman at both 800m and 1500m.
There was some rare road race competition on Saturday at the Antrim Coast Half Marathon where Jessica Craig representing Northern Ireland was seventh woman in an elite field in 75:45. In a separate race Harriers club mates Jack Brotchie ran 70:42, Andrew Warburton 70:49 and Marc Geraghty 71:43, all of them recording good PB times.
In the same race as Snowden at Aldershot GB cross country junior international Charlotte Alexander ran her first track race of the year and was close to her PB with her 4:29.2. Sarah Grover was similarly near to her best time with 4:34.7 in the previous race. Under 17 woman Poppy Craig McFeely clocked a PB of 4:44.2 behind Grover, while Mike Cummings was the sole male representative for the club running a season’s best of 4:01.4.
At Coulsdon Cummings ran 2:00.06 for 800m, while Jack Dickenson and Eriç Dol recorded 1500m PBs of 4.14.45 and 4.20.15 respectively.
In addition to Crowther’s fine win some other Herne Hill youngsters raced very well. Lucy Wright and Keenan Sriskandarajah ran PBs at both 300m and 800m as Under 13 Wright ran 47.59 and 2:30.45 and Under 15 Sriskandarajah 40.04 and 2:07.38.
Under 13 girls Orla Carroll and Sophie Jack ran PBs at 1500m 5:40.52 and 5:42.99 and under 13 boys Alexander Wilson, Josh Maguire, Warren Wilson and Alfie Bryan clocked PBs of 5:00.74, 5:11.36 and 5:12.36 and 5:35.16.
Under 15 boy Evan Cowell-New won his 1500m race in a sub 5 minutes PB of 4:59.25, with other under 15 boys Robin Bebbington and Alex Jack also running their fastest times so far with 4:30.97 and 5:03.68 respectively. In the final race of the day, exciting talent Dylan Sweet ran a PB of 4:11.58 in a bold attempt to try to run a 4 minutes time in a strong race.
Geoff Jerwood