Kielder Marathon Weekend Saturday & Sunday 12th & 13th October 2019 Around 7,000 athletes took part in the tenth anniversary edition of the Kielder Marathon series
with Morpeth Harriers represented across all of the weekend’s events. A decade since Steve Cram’s Events of the North company organised the first race along the gruelling 26.2-mile off-road course, the weekend has blossomed into a popular series of running and cycling races. Sunday’s marathon is now accompanied by a half marathon which takes in part of the same course around Kielder Water. And Saturday sees the popular Run-Bike-Run individual and team races, plus a 10k and junior events. Athletes faced variable conditions across the weekend with blue skies and sunshine on Saturday but mist and rain on the Sunday. By the time the marathon was coming to its conclusion on Sunday afternoon, the downpours were occasionally torrential and conditions were getting challenging under foot. Morpeth’s sole medal success came in the 10k where Mark Snowball ran a time of 35mins 25secs on the undulating course, which saw him claim second place. Mark finished 20secs behind winner Liam Taylor, of Sunderland Harriers. In the marathon, Morpeth’s highest finisher was Andrew Hebden, who was on the starting line for the inaugural race in 2010 and has only missed it once since. His time of 2hrs 58mins 42secs was just 20secs shy of his course PB and secured him seventh place overall in the fastest field in the event’s history. The gold medal went to North East veteran Iain Tweddle in a time of 2hrs 45mins 56 secs. He saw off a determined challenge from Keswick AC’s Russell Maddams (2hrs 47mins 6secs), who had been looking to secure a third successive Kielder title. Second home for Morpeth was Gary Mason, who finished 176th 3hrs 58mins 48secs, while Jane Briggs and Mike Steven crossed the line together in 4hrs 37mins 23secs, in 394th and 395th place respectively. Morpeth’s sole representative in the half marathon was Jill Sandeman who finished 653rd in a time of 2hrs 18mins 14secs. The club’s other finishers in the 10k were Clare Walker and Carol Parry who crossed the line together in 1hr 1min 26secs, in 466th and 467th place respectively. Brothers George and Hamish Tweedie, meanwhile, flew the flag for Morpeth in the junior run, finishing in 10th and 12th place respectively. Led by Morpeth Harrier Ryan Davies, who won the Intermediate Boys overall event by a margin of four seconds from club colleague Joe Dixon, King Edward School advanced to the next round of the English Schools Cross Country Cup, following an emphatic first round victory over second placed Newcastle Royal Grammar School, at Gateshead’s International Bowl, on the afternoon of Tuesday 8th October 2019.
In third place was another Morpeth Harrier Sam Tate, who was a further seventeen seconds adrift, and the King Edward team success was completed by fifth placed athlete Bertie Marr, also a Morpeth Harrier. Other Morpeth Harriers in action in the Intermediate Boys event, and representing King Edward, were Matthew Walton (13th), and Liam Roche (15th). The Intermediate Girls event also saw victory for a Morpeth Harrier, in the form of Abi Leiper, representing Ponteland High School, who won by one second from event favourite Millie Breeze of Alnwick, representing Duchess High School, who won the team event. Leiper led her school to fifth team place, with fellow Morpeth Harrier Mia Belton, also figuring in their team count, as third scorer in 27th place. King Edward School could only finish in eighth team place; however, they were led home by Sophia Cunningham, who had an excellent run, finishing in eleventh place. Another prominent Morpeth Harrier finisher in this event was Olivia Carruthers, who finished in seventeenth place, and was fourth counter for a third finishing Dame Allan’s School in Newcastle. Also running for Dame Allan’s was fellow Morpeth Harrier Laura Melling, who was outside the scoring four in 26th place. Other King Edward School and Morpeth Harriers finishers were Alice Hudson (29th), Ellie Wickens (51st), and sprinter Olivia Gent (54th). On Sunday October 6th 2019 the British Modern Triathlon Championships took place at Solihull.
The event is a part of the Modern Pentathlon series and comprises a 200m pool swim, followed by the Combined LaserRun which involves 4x800m runs interspersed with 4xpistol shooting. Ross Charlton posted a personal best in the swim with 2mins 16 seconds which put him in 6th place. The athletes swim time is then converted to a handicap for the LaserRun. Although the specialist swimmers had a significant head start on Ross, he soon made up the handicap in the LaserRun and came home a comfortable winner in 11.17, about thirty seconds ahead of Yeovil's George Case and London's George Simpson. Report by John Charlton A combative team performance from Morpeth Harriers’ Senior Men’s squad saw them finish in the top ten at the National Six Stage Road Relays held at Sutton Park,
Birmingham on a blustery Sunday afternoon (6th October 2019) . Posting an overall time of 1 hour 48 minutes and 52 seconds, the team finished in 8th place overall, their highest team placing in the competition for a number of years. The relay, which draws together the leading running clubs from all over England and Wales, was won by a currently unstoppable Leeds City AC in a time of 1:44:46, although the lead at the front had changed hands between no less than five clubs during the race, including Newham and Essex Beagles, Aldershot Farnham and District, Cambridge and Coleridge AC and Cardiff, with Leeds only coming out on top on the very last leg. Sam Hancox got Morpeth’s challenge under way on leg 1, always a fiercely contested one, and his clocking of 18:05 saw them in 27th place. The early lead was contested between Newham and Essex, Cambridge, Aldershot and Guildford, with only 4 seconds separating the clubs. In his first outing in a Morpeth vest, new recruit Chris Parr moved the club up some 17 places to 10th with a posting of 17:46, the third fastest for the leg. Meanwhile the overall lead had passed to Aldershot and Farnham, although Michael Ward’s 17:22 for Cardiff, fastest of the leg, had now moved them up to 3rd place. The team slipped slightly to 16th after Phil Winkler’s 18:55 third leg; Shaftesbury Barnet were now in the lead thanks to Liam Dee’s 17: 12 clocking (the 6th fastest overall of the day, in fact) with Aldershot and Cardiff 2nd and 3rd respectively. Leeds had now, however, ominously moved up to 4th thanks a flying 17:02 by Philip Sesemann, 4th fastest of the day overall. George Lowry battled back to 12th with a strong run 18:06 on leg 4 to get the club again within sight of the top 10, with Aldershot back at the top thanks to Richard Allen’s 17:26, with Cardiff and Leeds behind. Youngster Alex Brown moved the team up one more place on leg 5 to 11th with 18:38. Cardiff must have thought they had at least a medal at this point, in 1st place with a 44 second advantage over Cambridge and Coleridge’s 4th, with the silver and bronze medals looking like going to the same clubs. Marc Scott had, however, ran the fastest time of the day for Cambridge with 16:46 to put them in sight of a medal, while Emile Cairess for Leeds ran 17:02, 3rd fastest of the day overall. So it was left again to Carl Avery to see what he could do on the final leg for Morpeth. As he had done in the Northern event, Avery once more pulled out all the stops for a flying last leg of 17:22, the second fastest clocking for leg 6 behind Graham Rush of Leeds and just outside the top ten fastest overall of the day, to move the team up a further three places into 8th, only some 3 minutes 15 seconds off a medal placing. At the front of the race, last leg for Leeds Graham Rush ran 17:18 to hunt down those in front of him, the only time in the whole relay the club had actually lead! With Cardiff’s last leg runner only clocking 18:44, it was the Welsh club who missed out, with Aldershot Farnham and District picking up silver in 1:45:19 and Cambridge and Coleridge bronze in 1:45:37. Leeds recorded three of the fastest times of the day thanks to the runs of Cairess, Sesemann and Rush, and both Cambridge and Cardiff also had two runners each in that top ten. There was pride for Morpeth, however, in being the second club overall from the North of England behind winners Leeds City AC, but ahead of strong North West outfits from Manchester (Sale and Salford Harriers) and Liverpool, and again clearly first from the North East. ( Tyne Bridge were 49th in 1:59:13 and Gateshead a distant 56th in 2:00:52) The club’s Under 15 boys also competed earlier in the Junior three stage relay, won by Vale Royal AC in 38:20, and after Ryan Davies unfortunately lost time after being knocked over at the start, the team did really well to recover to 19th. Davies picked himself up and dusted himself down to run 14:04 on leg 1, Bertie Marr went a couple of seconds faster on leg 2, and Joe Dixon clocked an excellent 12:50 to move the club into 19th position overall out of some 62 clubs. With all three athletes gaining valuable experience by competing at this level and eligible to run in this age group again next year, this is certainly another positive sign of progress. Fellow North Easterners North Shields Polytechnic incidentally picked up bronze medals in this race, with teenage speed merchant Josh Blevins in fact recording the fastest U/15 time of the day in 12:29. Morpeth Harrier Laura Weightman, competing in her first World 5000m Final in Doha on Saturday 5th October 2019, following on from a tough Wednesday heat, performed excellently by finishing seventh in a top class field, that was led home by Kenyan pre-race favourite Helen Obiri, who posted a Championship record winning time of 14m26.72s, winning by almost a second from fellow Kenyan Margaret Chelimo Kipkemboi, with leading European Konstanze Klosterhalfen of Germany coming home for the Bronze medal in 14m28.43s.
Finishing seventh, Weightman was the second European, posting a new personal best time of 14m44.57s, and taking a whole seven seconds off her previous figures, which had been achieved in the Diamond League Anniversary Games at London’s Olympic Park in July. Three places behind Weightman was her fellow Great Britain counterpart Eilish McColgan, who had led the race twice during the twelve and a half laps. Once for the first 700m, and for 200m between 1300m and 1500m. McColgan finished with a time of 14m46.17s, which was also a new personal best for the Dundee athlete, which was a pleasing consolation, not only for her, but also her watching mother Liz, a legend herself. When interviewed afterwards by BBC Sport, Weightman was very modest about her achievement, and felt that she could have done a little better, and perhaps have claimed a top six placing. Nevertheless, this performance clearly means that Laura has finished her 2019 Summer track campaign off by topping the UK Rankings, which effectively speaks volumes on a Worldwide basis, especially with Tokyo Olympics just a year away. Barring injury and misfortune, plus that other matter of running qualifiers, she will make the trip, for what would be her third Olympics, having made the final of the Women’s 1500m on both of those two previous occasions in 2012 in London, and 2016 in Rio. Another Morpeth Harrier in action in Doha was Male Marathon specialist Serod Batochir. The celebrated Mongolian finished in 54th place in what was initially a 74 strong field, where only 55 finished, in what were difficult conditions in the early hours of Sunday morning. Serod, who celebrated his thirty eighth birthday on Monday 7th October, posted a finishing time of 2hrs36mins01secs. Great Britain’s Callum Hawkins of Kilbarchan, narrowly missed out on a Bronze medal by six seconds, finishing fourth behind Kenyan Amos Kipruto. Hawkins posted a finishing time of 2hrs10mins57secs. The event was won by Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa, who posted a winning time of 2hrs10mins40secs, just outsprinting team-mate Mosinet Geremew by four seconds. |
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