European Indoor Qualifying Time for Snowden in Manchester

With the majority of grassroots sports competition being on hold so far this year as a result of the national lockdown, there was a rare opportunity for some athletes with elite exemptions to race over the weekend as one or two small Covid secure indoor events were organised to provide athletes at a certain level with the chance to attain the qualifying standards to be eligible for selection for next month’s European Athletics Indoor Championship in Poland or simply to take part in a good race after the cancellation of the British Indoor Championship in Glasgow which had been scheduled for this coming weekend.


Herne Hill’s Katie Snowden went up to Manchester to race in the Bryggen Sports Elite Invitational meeting at SportCity, next door to the Etihad football stadium. Having had to miss around a month of her running training through injury from mid December through to the early part of January Snowden was mainly looking to see where she is currently at and to use this race to get a good training stimulus from competition, regardless of whether she was quite competition ready.

Placing a close second in the women’s 1500m in 4:10.43, just outside her indoor PB and just behind the breakthrough PB performance of the race winner was in the circumstances a very encouraging early year result and will help her next block of training to come. Snowden covered the pace increases after a fairly slow first half, but was not quite able to get past a clearly in form Holly Archer in the final few metres. Both Archer and Snowden recorded times that are well inside the European Indoor Championship qualifying time for the event.

Shortly after finishing this race Snowden was then back on the track to act as the pacemaker for the women’s 800m, covering her allotted 400m in the requested time, perhaps ironically after her own race had not enjoyed the services of a pacer for their early laps. All in all this was a good days work, all of which bodes well for what we hope will unfold into a good year if circumstances will permit. 

Geoff Jerwood

Photo credits Pete Brown Photography

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