Marriott runs for Britain & 10 teams compete for the Harriers at Aldershot

Harrier Adrian Marriott had a very successful debut for Team GB on Sunday at the Toronto Marathon. He ran 2.18.57 for the traditional 26.2 mile distance, and ran the second half of the race slightly quicker, a ‘negative split’. He ran with fellow GB team mate Neil Renault, and they finished in 14^th and 15^th place in the 2000 plus field. The winning time by Kenyan John Kelai was the fastest marathon time ever on Canadian soil, a time of 2.09.29. Adrian and Neil, together with fellow GB athletes Alice Braham and Jenny Clague, were competing for Britain against teams from Canada, the USA, and Mexico. Adrian’s time was a personal best by almost 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, the Harriers fielded 10 teams across all the age groups at the South of England Road Relay Championships on Saturday and Sunday held at Aldershot. The race venue is the former parade ground of the army and provides a traffic free venue with a looped course. With 2 testing hills each circuit this is not an easy course!

The Club finished with 3 top ten positions and many excellent individual performances. None more so than by one of the Harrier’s other GB internationals, Frank Tickner who stormed around the senior men’s 5.99km course on Saturday to record the fastest time of the day with 17.11 just 4 seconds outside of the course record set in 1989. He was even faster than fellow GB team-mate Mo Farah’s time of last year. Frank was awarded the prestigious individual Gold Medal for his achievement.

The senior men’s team saw Pete Grist and Eddie Richards come into the team this year in place of Adrian Marriott and Andrew Baker, to join Frank and Ben Tickner, Andrew Hennessy and Carl Morris. This year they finished 4^th team overall following on from 2^nd in the past two years. The team started solidly with Andrew and Carl running 18.39 and 19.46 respectively, before Pete carried on the good work with a nippy 19.02, prior to the storming run by Frank to haul the team up to 4^th place, and maintained by Eddie, 19.32 and Ben finishing off with 18.04, the fastest final leg run and 5^th fastest of the day. The team was less than 30 seconds outside of the medals this year and will look to go again at the National Road Relays in three weeks time.

The best junior performance by the Harriers came with the u’13 girl’s team where the trio of Kayley Kennedy, Lauren Willows and Emily Smith finished an excellent 9^th against some top quality opposition. This was a good improvement on last year’s 20^th place with only Lauren of the three having competed here before. Kayley continues to get stronger with every race and ran 8.54 for the 2.29km course with Lauren recording 9.06, and Emily 9.18.

The other top ten finish came in the Harrier’s V50 team where 6^th place was achieved by a quartet that was managed and led by Dickie Wythe over the 5.99km course. Clive Harwood ran the fastest for the team with 22.07, Bob Martin with 25.28, Dickie running 22.36, and junior team manager Paul Chadwick finishing off with 23.47.

For the junior Harriers there were also good performances by teams in the u’13 & u’15 boys, and the u’15 girls and u’17 men’s teams. The u’13 boys team of Tristan Goldsmid, James Todd, Matthew Cole & Will Norris finished 18^th in times of 11.58, 12.35, 12.00 and 11.45 respectively for the 2.99km course, with all 4 of them making their debut this year. The u’15 boys’ team consisted of 3 of the 4 that had finished a strong 4^th here last year as u’13s. This time, at the younger end of the age group, this trio of George Harris, Cameron Rafferty and Callum Batten together with the experienced Tom thick finished a handy 28^th place and will look forward to coming back here next year to see how much quicker they can go.

For the u’15 girls, Lamorna Schanche answered a late call up by running well to support her two more experienced team mates of Jessica wood and Lizzie Hart to finish an excellent 41^st in a very competitive field. The Harrier’s last junior team to run on the Sunday was the u’17 men where the quartet of Alex Wiltshire, Ben Venus, Louis Curtis and John Richardson came home in 24^th place. All four of these athletes can compete again at this age group next year. Fastest man was Alex with 12.38 for the 3.85km course.

Also in the senior men’s race, the B team finished 38^th with the following times: Jack Bancroft 20.19; Rob Parfitt 20.43; Adam Bowers 19.49; Jon Gilling 20.51; Tom Lock 22.00; Pete Darton 21.53. Given that 4 of this team were making their debut at these particular relays, there is obviously more to come from some, if not all of these guys. In the Harrier C team, Ed Willingham also ran a very useful debut 22.50 for the course. The V40 team finished 31st with Andrew Deamer some way faster than his team mates with his 21.25, followed by Dave Stanfield 23.11, Steve Masters 27.52 after going the wring way and Steve Padfield 28.55. Well done to all. Other C team runners enjoying their second time round were Dave Stanfield (24.04), Steve Masters and Paul Chadwick (24.27), with Steve pulling out the sort of performance he is well capable of 2^nd time round with his 23.19!

Many thanks to all the team managers, and parents that supported their youngsters to compete, and all that made the weekend very enjoyable!