Night of 1500 metre races.
The Pingles Stadium – Friday 18th September.
Report – David Jones
On a blustery night at The Pingles Stadium there were some superb performances from the 8 club members who took part, 4 of who managed PBs in far from ideal conditions.
U15 Alex Adams improved his PB, achieved just 5 days previous at the club championships, by 4 seconds in recording a time of 4:13.38. This sees him move up to 10th place in this year’s UK rankings in his highly competitive age group.
U17 James Mucklow knocked 3 seconds off his PB with a time of 4:32.82.
Georgie Campbell, one of 3 Campbell siblings competing on the night, was a mere 0.53 of a second off her PB in running a time of 4:43.06. This places her 24th in this year’s UK rankings for her age. Brother Ned had a superb race, knocking a huge 27 seconds off his PB, despite both the fierce headwind along the home straight and him suffering from a bad back. He ran a technically superb race, not going off too quickly at the start and tucking in behind the race leader for a large part of the race before moving in to pole position. Ned was helped somewhat by the fact that the Notts runner he had overtaken continued to chase him, indeed was threatening to overtake him going in to the final bend. This gave him the impetus he needed to finish strongly. Despite his big PB he did feel a slight disappointment in that his finishing time of 5:00.56 was agonisingly close to a sub 5 minute time. Something to aim for next time Ned. Sister Tilly was a bit disappointed in her time of 6:36.08 but in her defence, the wind in her race, the first heat of the night, was particularly strong. I can certainly vouch for that as I was in the same heat.
There were a couple of other superb performances on the night from junior members. The ever improving Tessa Parkin ran a time of 5:40.80 and Olivia Robinson made a dream start to her 1500m race career, being something of an 800m specialist. Her mother had entered her in the race with a predicted time of 5:10, something Olivia doubted she was capable of. However, in leading the race form gun to tape she did indeed run 5:10 – 5:10.59 to be precise. Some time mom’s do know best Olivia.
I ran a disappointing 5:53.73, almost 10 seconds slower than my time at Leamington a week previous,. Maybe 4 races in a week wasn’t such a good idea after all. |