Arguably Herne Hill Harriers most improved senior athlete in the past year, Lucy Jones has followed up her startling victory in the female mass participation London Marathon with a strong track season.
Jones has so far set personal best times this summer at 800m, 1500m and 5000m after smashing her 3000m PB at a BMC indoor meet back in January. Demonstrating an enviable and remarkable range, our club women’s marathon record holder with 2:30.23 has also run 800m in 2:05.45, a time that has so far only been beaten by our club women’s record holder Katie Snowden among our female members!
On a windy Friday evening on 25th July she raced in the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham and led the England Athletics Championship women’s 1500m final from gun to tape to claim the gold medal. Her winning time of 4:19.20 was largely irrelevant in the conditions as she prevailed in the finishing straight for a superb win.
Also in the race club mate and training partner Sophie Tooley finished 4th overall with 4:25.18, but with two under 23 athletes finishing between her and Jones she was actually the second placed senior woman in this championship race.
In the under 20 men’s 100m, club record holder for this age group Rikaion Smith qualified from his heat in a wind assisted 10:57 but then did not contest his semifinal the following day.
This coming weekend on 2nd/3rd August Jones (5000m), Tooley (1500m) and Smith (100m) are all on the entry lists for the UK Athletics Championship, also in Birmingham and will be joined by Harriers internationals Katie Snowden (1500m) and Kristal Ama-Awuah (100m) plus Annabel Hobday (1500m).
Snowden in particular will have high hopes of qualifying for selection for the Great Britain team for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo next month. Fingers crossed…
Geoff Jerwood
photo credits James Rhodes