T&F Bonanza and much more.

The Dream Team. Jess Sheppard, Daisy Musk, Emily Field and Imogen Sheppard, our 4 x 400m relay team after destroying the opposition and winning the race by 23 seconds, in a club record time of 4.04.2 When you consider that what follows is a mere 8 days in the life of Stratford upon Avon Athletic Club, it really does beggars belief. This is the 99th newsletter I have produced and I doubt there has been many more eventful weeks in that time. Paul Bearman's diary for the week goes some way to explaining what's been happening and I daresay if Paul Hawkins were to produce something similar it would be equally exhaustive. When you consider that 13 out of 32 of the Warwickshire Team competing in this weekend's English School's Championship are from our club, a team who's selected captains for the women's and men's team are club members Imy Sheppard and Jack Sumners and a team that will be co-managed by Danny Tolhurst, together with the fact that of the 69 team members who will be representing their country at the upcoming European U20 championships, only two clubs in the whole country will be supplying more than one team member, ourselves and Exeter, the term punching above our weight doesn't get close. I guess we must be doing something right ! As well as Paul's diary for the week, we have reports on Nacho Fernandez, our first decathlete for over a quarter of a century. There are reports on both the Senior and Vet's latest T&F fixtures. The final results for the Vets team show that our men were just 8 points, not 14, behind Worcester. The team spirit and camaraderie of these fixtures is perhaps best summed up in Paul Hawkins' comment referring to Dan Boyd : “I was immensely proud of all the athletes who gave everything for their team. Dan Boyd epitomised the team spirit; he’s a sprinter/long jumper but was injured in our last match, as we were short of throwers he offered to do all four throws, trained for them, and performed exceptionally" Paula Williams and Phil Brennan helped Midland Masters win the Inter Area Championships and Phil won silver in the BMAF half marathon. We have Pete Wharton's report on his PB performance at Ironman Austria. There's a couple of half marathons - The Black Country and Leamington. Rachel Pearce finished 2nd in her age category in the Didcot 5 and we had 4 members competing in the Evesham 10k. What isn't included is the fact that Emma Bexson got a silver medal at 2019 Târgu Mures ETU Multisport European Championships in Romania. She was 2nd in the female 40-44 age category with a time of 4:42.29, just 6 minutes behind the winner and 11 minutes ahead of the 3rd placed finisher. Also at the 2019 Târgu Mures ETU Duathlon European Championships there was bitter, bitter disappointment for Fern Hordern. Having trained tremendously hard for these championships and knowing she had a good…