A great night of racing

77 p.b.s, 25 season's bests and the fastest time by an U17 for 46 years....the inaugural HW 3000m Night on Wednesday provided a feast of racing, booking the event a permanent place on the Club's fixtures calendar.

One of the youngest HW athletes, 14-year Georgie Clarke, set the tone at the beginning of the evening, clocking a p.b. of 10:32.97. Running in the same race and sporting his signature bandana was Pete Clarke. Having promised a bottle of Champagne to anyone who could beat his own pb of 8:07.47 set in 1986 at Crystal Palace, he took to the track for a 3000m for the first time in, well let's just say a while. In the final race Andrew Penney gave Pete's Challenge his best shot, taking the race out from the bell, and though he was just unable to hold on for the win he set a fantastic time of 8:13.55. Pete was so impressed with Andrew's gutsy run that he presented him with the Champagne anyway. The last race of the night was also notable for an outstanding performance by U17 Mohamed Ali of Ealing, Southall and Middlesex, whose time of 8:15.02 shot him up to second on the all time list ahead of the likes of Mo Farah and narrowly behind leader Barrie Moss, whose time of 8:13.42 was set back in 1972, also at Crystal Palace.

Watch all seven races here, as filmed by Mark Hookway of Tonbridge AC.

HW's Mabel-Rose Scales made an impressive debut for Surrey in the Derek Crookes U13 Inter-county match at Kingston last Sunday, writes Tom Pollak.

She cleared a personal best 1.45m to finish fourth in the high jump, clearing the same height as the third placed athlete and helping Surrey to finish third out of the 13 counties in the team event. Her performance also puts her top of the first year high jumpers in this year’s U13 UK rankings. She added two centimetres to her previous best set in winning the Surrey title at the same venue in May.

The youngster said: “I’m really proud today and was so grateful to have my coach Trevor Whittle there to help and support me”.

Tomorrow, Sunday August 5th, HW's English Junior Men’s 100m Champion, Chad Miller, will represent GB over the sprint distance in the Berlin U20 Match, ahead of the start of the European Championships, in which the team will take on France and Germany over 10 events. Chad was the youngest of six British athletes competing in a European Athletics Classic Meeting in Karlstad, Sweden last week, in his first competition since narrowly failing to reach the 100m final at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Tampere, Finland. Teenager Miller was third in his 200m race in 21.08 and sixth in the 100m in 10.45. Miller is ranked second and third UK U20 sprinter over 100m and 200m this season.

The previous week his elder brother, Rechmial, posted his best time of the season in finishing third in a 100m race at Lee Valley, North London, in 10.35 with the help of a 1.6 metres per second tailwind. Earlier, he was sixth in his first race in a slightly slower 10.54. His fellow HW international, Theo Etienne, was also in action at Lee Valley, finishing fifth, (just ahead of Miller) in his opening 100m race, in 10.53, and then just behind Miller in his second outing in 10.36.

Rob Tuer made a winning debut in the Eastbourne 5km parkrun last Saturday beating a 319-strong field to cross the line in 17:39 while Gina Galbraith was top woman finisher in the Chichester event in 19:20, chopping 39 seconds off her previous best for the course with the top age-graded performance of the day. Ellen Weir was second female finisher on the Isle of Wight in 21:29 while teenager Henry Silverstein was fifth out of 542 runners on his Edinburgh debut in 17:05. David Lewin was the best of 16 Hercules Wimbledon runners on Wimbledon Common finishing third of the 383 runners in 17:28.