Results are here.
This Sunday afternoon Herne Hill’s M50 men’s veterans team won the prestigious South of England AA road relay championships at Aldershot’ Rushmoor Arena for the first time.
Blustery conditions prevailed as first leg runner Vic Maughn (21m 40s) set a fine pace to close his stage of four in third place to put the Herne Hill team into serious contention. Non-scoring club member Tom Conlon (21m 1s) confounded team selection to be one of the two M50 veterans home ahead of him.
The race at the front showed the real contenders for team medals on the second stage where the Hill’s Keith Newton (21m 2s) took the head of the race on the first lap of two and subsequently held off the fast approaching Barnet athlete in second place to hand over a 9 second lead to Mike Boyle.
Home team Aldershot had now slipped to third place. Front running holds no fear to Boyle, a previous holder of the veteran athlete of the year title, who tore the heart out of the Barnet challenge extending the gap between the two clubs to 73 seconds whilst posting the team’s best time of exactly 21 minutes for his undulating 6 kilometre stage.
Aldershot and the remaining teams were now out of contention as Herne Hill’s Gary Ironmonger (21m 28s) was, as predicted, being chased down by the fastest Barnet athlete Richard McCormick for the prestigious gold medals.
Halfway through the final leg the gap was reduced by 18 second, so mathematically sound pace judgement was enough to win it for Herne Hill. Gary did not disappoint, he held his nerve and gave his victory salute to win by 35 seconds!
Fastest M50 veteran of the day, Jon James (19m 55s) stormed through the final stage for Wells City to take the bronze medals to complete the medal positions.
This Herne Hill M50 squad now looks to more serious efforts to take medals over the coming road and country season.
1st Herne Hill Harriers 85min 10secs, 2nd Barnet and District 85min 45secs, 3rd Wells City Harriers 87mins 36secs.
(Reported by Valdis Pauzers.)
p.s.
Our 5 fastest M50s were all in the top 15 overall. Great run by Tom, albeit not in our gold medal winning team.
1st M50
4th U13G (B team 15th) Oscar Millard was equal 3rd fastest
8th U15G (B team 12th) Saskia Millard 6th fastest
8th U17M
15th Senior Men
33rd Senior Women