There was a Southern area Indoor championship silver medal for Herne Hill’s star long jumper Ore Adamson and good news for Harriers athletes at both ends of the age spectrum as Phoebe Anderson has been selected to race for the England Under 20 women’s team at the Belgium Cross Cup this coming weekend, while M40 John Kettle & M50 Jonathan Ratcliffe will represent the England Masters team at the Fleet Half Marathon next month.
The Lee Valley Athletics Centre staged the South of England Senior and Under 20 Indoor Championship over the weekend. The only Herne Hill athlete to bring home an area medal was Ore Adamson, whose 5.83m earned her a silver medal in the Under 20 women’s long jump, a seasons best performance as she starts to build into full competition mode.
Ratcliffe was in action at the Serpentine Last Friday 5km in Hyde Park, where Harriers athletes included Alex Hobley clocking 16:10, Ratcliffe 18:04and Julia Wedmore running a PB of 18:21 to win the women’s race.
At Saturday’s BUCS British Students Cross Country Championship in Edinburgh there were Herne Hill athletes in all four of the races. Alexandra Brown placed seventh in the women’s short course race (6km), Lewis Laylee was 94th in the men’s short course, Alex’s older sister Kate Brown finished 68th in the women’s long race, while Arlo Ludewick placed 96th in the men’s long race after illness and Laurie Pope was 241st in the same high quality race.
Back at Lee Valley in the sprint races Lakeisha Owusu-Junior was sixth in the Under 20 women’s 60m final in 7.68 after running 7.67 in placing second in her semi-final. Eleanor Smith-Hahn was also second in the senior women’s 60m semi-final in a faster time of 7.69 than her 7.82 to finish seventh in her final. Memphis Ayoade looked good in winning his Under 20 men’s 400m heat in 51.98, but was unable to progress from his semi-final race later in the day.
Fiona de Mauny placed sixth in the senior women’s 800m final in 2:19.04 in a three way battle for fourth in which she just ran out of legs. The final was only a couple of hours after a good 2:15.43 season opener at the distance in her heat, a good day’s work towards the European Masters Indoor Championships in Portugal next month. Jenny Sheasby was eighth in the senior women’s pole vault in a season’s best 2.70m, while Michaela Mensah jumped a PB 10.38m for 11th in the Under 20 women’s triple jump.
On Sunday morning on the Isle of Wight top female road racer Steph McCall’s fine time of 60:36 at the very hilly Ryde 10 mile race saw her finish first woman and place ninth overall. This was a substantial improvement on her time of 61.51 when winning the women’s category at the same event a year ago and bodes very well for her London Marathon training and aspirations.
There was more good road racing at the Chichester 10km road race on Sunday morning. Mike Cummings was 39th with 31:53, Josh Pewter 96th in 34:00, Matthew Munro 126th 35:03, Eriç Dol 132nd 35:20 and the ubiquitous Ratcliffe recorded 36:11 for a strong M50 performance.
With no club league or championship team events over the weekend, Harriers were also out in strength at Saturday’s Dulwich parkrun. Nick Bester clocked a good 15:53. M40 Robin Jones ran 16:32, Myles Preston 16.39, Jeff Cunningham just under 17 minutes and Eoin Brady 17:12 as the leading Herne Hill men in what amounted to something of a takeover on the day.
This coming Saturday sees the Surrey Cross Country League season finales with the women’s Division 1 race starting at 1pm in Richmond Park and the men’s Division 1 at 3pm in Lloyd Park. Herne Hill men and women both go into their last league races of the winter in fifth place overall in their respective leagues.