Report – David Jones.
There has been more activity from T&F club members at The Pingles Stadium in Nuneaton this past week.
Last weekend saw 5 members competing in a Seniors and U20 meeting.
Peter Coote discovered that shedding 2 stone/13kg during lockdown doesn’t exactly help when competing in throwing events.
Despite this his best throw of 7.19m was sufficient to earn him a new club record. In the Javelin Peter’s best throw was 29.13m and he retains his number 1 UK ranking in his age group for this year.
Dave Wilson had a mixed day. He only entered the triple jump because he wasn’t sure he could secure a place in his favoured 400m.
In jumping 9.41 metres in the triple jump he broke his own club record. Having done this he thought he would throw caution to the wind and go for broke with his next attempt. Unfortunately the result of this was a tweaked hamstring meaning he had to withdraw from the 400m. He also had to withdraw from Wednesday’s “Night of 100ms” event at the same venue.
Imogen Sheppard doubled up on the day by competing in both the 100m and 200m and she was pleased with her races, especially as, like most of us, she hasn’t raced much this year.
Her 100m time of 13.04 was just 3/10ths of a second off her PB and 8/100ths of a second off her season’s best. In the 200m she finished in a time of 26.87. A big plus for Imy was that she got the chance to meet the guy who will be her coach at Birmingham University for the first time, together with a group of athletes who will be in her training group.
Emily Field also doubled up but this time in the longer distances of 400m and 800m, which is an extremely difficult thing to do. However, despite this she recorded a 3 second season’s best in the 800m with a time of 2:19.86, her previous best time for the year being 2:22.96. In the 400m she was 3/4 second off her season’s best, running a time of 62.4 seconds.
In the 800m I managed to shave just under a second off my SB with a time of 2:48.08, just 1.38 seconds shy of my PB from 2014. I also ran my first 200m for a couple of years, recording a time of 35.33, which is a new club record.
I think I’ll stick to the longer distances though!
On Wednesday evening it was a Night of 100m races and this event attracted a truly top class field from all over the country with the top 3 finishers in the A race are ranked 3rd, 4th and 5th in this year’s UK rankings.
The winning time by James Williams of 10.35 has only been beaten by Chijindu Ujay – 10.17 and Adam Gemili – 10.28 this year, with Gemili’s time being achieved on the same day in Hungary.
Representing our club was M60 master athlete Mark Illingworth. Mark’s time of 14.39 was just outside his club record time of 14.22 achieved at the same venue in July.