Morpeth Harrier Laura Weightman was forced to battle all the way to the line
to secure her Women’s 1500m place in this year’s Rio Olympics at the British Athletics Championships at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium on Sunday 26th June. Weightman and Dundee’s Laura Muir were neck and neck at the bell, and were still locked together with just over 200m remaining. At that point Muir made a determined break for home, and was never caught, and crossed the finish line in 4m10.14s. Meanwhile Weightman had a new battle all of her own with Wakefield’s Charlene Thomas as the pair hurtled down the finishing straight. With around 30m remaining Thomas put in a determined lunge to claim the vital second place, however the braveness of Weightman saw her just manage to edge in front as they both crossed the finish line with very little between them. Thankfully Weightman just got the verdict she wished for, by eight hundredths of a second, leaving Thomas very disappointed that she had just missed out. Another Morpeth Harrier in action at the championships, and perhaps quite surprisingly was Jonny Taylor. Less than three weeks after we reported that Taylor was very likely to miss the rest of the season, following a serious altercation with a Police Dog whilst out training near his Tees-side home, he made the start line for the Men’s 5000m. Although obviously not feeling fully fit, he can be modestly pleased in the fact that he finished ninth of the nineteen finishing athletes. He clocked a finishing time of 14m05.45s, which was just over twenty seconds adrift of Central AC’s Andrew Butchart, who won by nearly four seconds from Border’s Tom Farrell, with Aldershot and Farnham’s Andy Vernon finishing third, a further two seconds adrift. There were some excellent performances by athletes from the ranks of
Morpeth Harriers at the annual Northumberland Minor School’s Track and Field Championships held at Wentworth Stadium, Hexham, on Saturday 25th June 2016. Respective wins by Lily Heaton and Holly Peck in the Year 8 Girls 800m and 1500m in 2m29.2s and 5m00.6s, certainly reflected the excellent form that they are both in at present. Amy Lott’s win in the Year 7 Girls Hurdles in 12.0s also reflects a fine performance. Despite a superb effort Rhiannon Hedley just lost out for victory in the Year 7 Girls 1500m, where she clocked 5m06.2s. Morpeth Harriers produced three winners and two second places in the Year 7 Boys events. Bobby Stone won the 800m in 2m27.1s, Alfie Ward won the Long Jump with a best of 4.33m, and Daniel Dowd won the Javelin with a best of 28.65m. Second places were achieved by Charlie Lane in the 300m with a clocking of 45.70s, and Ben Waterfield finished second in the High Jump with his clearance of 1.38m. Morpeth Harriers A team won back their title at the seventh running of the annual Weetslade Relays, held at Lockey Park in Wideopen on Wednesday 22nd June, and in the process set a new course record. Organised by Newcastle based Claremont Road Runners, this event has a slightly unusual structure as teams of three must include at least one male, one female and one veteran (in any combination), but it has grown year by year to the extent that nearly one hundred local teams now take part. The 2.5 mile course sets off from the headquarters of Wideopen Football Club at Lockey Park but sees runners tackle their own ‘heartbreak hill’ in the shape of the now re-grassed Weetslade spoil heap, now part of a flourishing nature reserve. On a first leg which many clubs choose to place their fastest runners, a group of four soon established itself with Morpeth Harriers Tom Straughan and Sam Hancox to the fore, along with Marc Fenwick of Tyne Bridge and Abraham Tewelde of Saltwell. By the final half a mile, Hancox and Tewelde had just pulled away by seconds from Fenwick with Straughan not far behind. As the Saltwell runner wound up the pace in the last hundred yards it looked like Hancox would have to settle for second, but the 21 year old dug deep, found an extra gear and managed to go toe to toe to the line. In the event, neither the timekeepers nor referee could split them, and both runners were awarded the same time of 12 minutes 29 seconds – which as it turned out was the fastest of the night. This of course put Morpeth’s A team in second place by a matter of seconds, but leading senior female Emma Holt set confidently about reeling in both veteran Alison Dargie of Tyne Bridge and her own club compatriot and training partner Gemma Floyd. By the time she reappeared on the track of the old railway workings she had taken over half a minute out of Dargie and a minute out of veteran Floyd (15m 22s) and established what looked like an unassailable lead in running 14m 24s. It was left to veteran Chris Smith, a member of Morpeth’s winning team at the British Masters Relay in May and an individual winner of the same organisation’s 5k championships the previous weekend, to carry the baton home and this he did with some style, stretching the club’s lead further and finishing some 44 seconds ahead of James Dunce of Tyne Bridge in second with a time of 12m 47s. Morpeth’s B team were unlucky to have to settle for third place after final leg runner Jonny Nisbet,
competing for the club after arriving home from his second year at Dundee University, put in a powerful leg of 12m 50s that saw him get on level terms with Dunce as they approached the run-in. Sadly, his efforts in catching up put him at a disadvantage for the sprint finish and the team missed out on second to Tyne Bridge by a mere 4 seconds (40m 41s). With the club fielding in total eight full teams and 24 runners, there were a whole string of decent runs behind the A and B teams. The C and D teams finished in 13th and 12th places respectively after changing places several times on the night. In his last competitive outing for the club for a while, Mick Thomsen, soon to be posted by the RAF to Germany for two years, had a good run of 14m 19s to come home ahead of C teamer Matthew Boyle (14m 58s). Vickey Gibbs (16m 53s) got the C team back on level terms as she came in with D team runner and A level student Alison Brown (17m 34s), and it was left to Tony Lewis for the D team and men’s team manager David Swinburne for the C to battle it out together on the last leg. Swinburne (14m 23s) got his nose in front twice but Lewis (14m 19s) proved too strong on the run in and the D team triumphed by a mere 2 seconds. Behind them were the D team of Rob Hancox (14m 31s), Jane Kirby (18m 37s) and Tim Miley (15m 27s) in 24th place; a scratch H team (who only accepted a last minute place with half an hour’s notice) of Paul Waterston (15m 14s), Carol Parry (19m 46s) and Mick Skelton (16m 18s) in 40th; and an F team of Mike Winter (16m 1s), Sue Smith (20m 5s) and Paul Bellingham (16m 14s) in 44th. The club’s final counts came from Jim Alder (16m 14s), Cinty Wake (21m 8s) and, in her first competitive outing of this kind, Frances Naylor (21m 4s), who finished in 81st. A wholly satisfying evening was compounded further when, n addition to the club’s overall victory, Morpeth were declared to have had joint fastest senior male (Sam Hancox), fastest senior female (Emma Holt) and fastest male veteran (Chris Smith). The A team’s combined time of 39m 53s was later confirmed as a course record. In all some 96 teams ran. Report by Peter Scaife Seven athletes from Morpeth Harriers competed at the third of the North East Regional BMC Meetings,
held at Chester Le Street’s Riverside track on Monday 20th June 2016. Two new lifetime personal bests figured amongst their performances in the 800m events, they were achieved by Joe Armstrong, who finished second in the fastest race in 1m55.0s, and Jordan Scott, who won a six man F race in 2m06.3s. It also saw Olympic hopeful Laura Weightman making a rare North East track appearance, and she finished fourth in a mixed gender E race in a modest 2m05.6s. Two places behind Laura was her Morpeth Harriers club colleague Jacob Hopkins, who clocked 2m07.5s. Kieran Hedley was agonisingly just a split second adrift of his lifetime best in the second fastest race of the night, in which he finished fifth of six in 1m58.5s. Morpeth’s Under 15 Boy athlete Ross Charlton produced a seasons best of 2m23.0s, when he finished fifth of six runners in the mixed gender ninth fastest race. In the eleventh event on the programme, Morpeth Harriers Rhiannon Hedley, younger sister of Kieran, produced a seasons best of 2m28.3s, coming home in sixth place overall in a race containing nine runners of mixed age girls of Under 17/Under 15 and Under 13 age groups. She was a second ahead of fellow Under 13 Girl Anna Mason of Border Harriers, and only a second adrift of her own personal best. Morpeths Scott Beattie showed that he is returning to better form after illness forced him to take a back seat at the end of May, when he produced brand new figures of 8m31.46s, to finish fifth in the Under 20 Men’s 3000m and the combined English Under20/23 Athletics Championships, held at Bedford on Saturday 18th June 2016. His new personal best was by a margin of eleven seconds on the two identical clockings that he had made in 2015, when competing at the same venue in the combined Under 15/Under 17 Championships last August, and at the All England Schools Championships a month previous. Beattie had indeed looked a medal prospect during Saturday’s race, and he only just lost out in the closing stages of the seven and a half lap event. |
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