Herne Hill Harriers young athletes continued their superb start of the winter season by dominating at the Surrey County Young Athletes cross country relays at Stoke Park Guildford on Saturday. Having won medals and National and Southern road and cross country relays in the past month the young athletes distance squad won five of the six races and came second in the sixth.
Our U13 boys started the medal haul with twins Jacob and Ben Harrison putting Jaden Kennedy in the ideal position to surge into the lead and storm clear setting the fastest time of the day.
Our U13 girls had the closest race of the day with Rosie Hammond and Jessica Tabraham setting up Maisie Collis for the final leg, Maisie was chased throughout by the Guildford athlete but stormed up the final hill and pulled away in the final half mile and recorded the fastest leg of the race.
Our Under 15 boys had a good win with Oscar Millard handing over to Mohammed Ali in the lead, Mohammed stayed close to the lead and gave Mohamed Mohamud the perfect opportunity to win. Mohamed was the fastest runner in the race.
Our Under 15 girls had a good battle with a strong Guildford team who they had beaten the week before in the Southern relays, Eimear Griffin was second on a competitive first leg and Clarissa Nicholls stormed clear on leg two to set up a 150 metre lead but Guildford had their strongest runner on leg three and she ate into Katie Balmes lead on the final leg. As they came into sight with 800m to go Katie had a reducing 100m lead but held on to win by five seconds.
Our Under 17 men of Laurie Pope, Abel Tadesse and Paul Burgess couldn’t make it a perfect six as they ran into a strong Guildford
team with Abel the third fastest.
In the final race our Under 17 women stormed into the lead on leg two after Zoe and Hannah Tompkins set up Maddie Shaw and Maddie strolled around the final leg to win by 100 metres
In all over thirty young athletes ran and there were some really strong runs from B and C teams including five teams in the Under 13 girls race. The squad now head to Mansfield for the national cross country relays this weekend.