Jamie Taylor-Caldwell reports on the men’s team, while Lynn Wilson adds a note on the women:
With England Athletics’ update yesterday now permitting group training (up to 6 people), hopefully it won’t be too long before we see a return to the typical racing calendar. For now, virtual races are proving to be a good motivational tool and great way to get those competitive juices flowing.
Heading into the fourth and last day of the competition the ESM men were trailing several hundred points behind Eagles, but some great runs on Sunday saw us get tantalisingly close to being the top Met League Team, finishing just three points behind Victoria Park.
There were particularly good runs from Elias, who’d only just returned to training after a 3 week break for Ramadan; Tim, running 10 seconds faster than his Perivale 5 PB; John Fielding, who’s making a very promising comeback to racing; And probably the best run has to go to Pete, taking the scalps of middle distance youngsters Ben, Chris and Tom.
Sean and Nick left their runs till 9pm on Sunday, both aiming to make the scoring 12 without knowing each other were still to beat as well! The quirks of virtual racing. Sean (30:59), nursing a knee injury, was initially 12th just two seconds in front of Adam Goodman (31:01), but Nick snuck in with a 30:34 just 20 minutes later.
There was also a close battle in the M50s. Rob Brown (33:09), who I spotted tearing down the A40 early on in his race, just got the win over James Steel (33:34).
And there’s plenty more virtual racing coming up, with the Summer League series of 5 mile and 10K races, team captain Bev Packwood will be posting about those.
Lynn Wilson takes up the story:
The ladies also participated in this one and it was good fun sharing our stories and tech problems but we had a full complement in the end. Well done Ladies. Although we were fifth out of five teams it was all about taking part. We ended up with 727 points behind, Kent, Herne Hill Harriers, Ealing Eagles A & B.
Results summary:
Men: 37 Elias Ahmed (U20M) 27:11; 40 Tim Lawrence (M35) 27:14; 46 Stuart Ferguson 27:25; 49 John Fielding 27:39; 65 John Robertson (M40 28:24; 76 Jonathan Horan (M35) 28:52; 80 Pete Flewitt (M45) 29:01; 82 Santosh Rai (M35) 29:02; 87 Ben Waterman 29:19; 91 Chris Hepworth 29:30; 95 Tom Gifford 29:45; 109 Nick Steel 30:34; 115 Sean Hanrahan (M35) 30:59; 118 Adam Goodman 31:01; 128 Akira Anzai-Jackson 31:41; 137 Colin Foster (M35) 32:21; 149 Rob Brown (M50) 33:09; 158 James Steel (M50) 33:44; 185 Javaher Sondh (M35) 36:12; 227 Andy Leung (M45) 41:44; 229 Nick Vanson (M60) 41:55
Women (positions overall then in women’s field): 157 (17) Sarah Gerrie (W35) 33:35; 168 (22) Sarah Harris (W40) 34:32; 188 (32) Breege Leane (W55) 36:17; 208 (48) Lynn Wilson (W60) 39:00; 214 (53) Patricia Thomas (W50) 39:37; 231 (63) Megan Hubbard 42:01; 246 (76) Annette Galloway (W50) 44:31; 248 (78) Christine Meek (W60) 45:06; 249 (79) Beverley Packwood (W45) 45:14; 251 (81) Mariona Sorrosal (W40) 45:34; 257 (87) Sue Dyke (W52) 49:47; 261 (91) Lindsay Donoghue (W50) 55:34; 263 (93) Louise Prince (W50) 64:05