Malaga Masters

A handful of HW members were out in Malaga last week representing Club and countries at the World Masters Championships in Malaga. Husband and wife team Dominic and Emilie Bokor-Ingram were representing Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Denmark respectively, joined by Mark White (GB & NI) and fellow Southern Counties Vet and training group partner Glenn Gray. Dominic was second in the V50 800m heats, and also second in his semi final in 2:06.49. He went into the final as 4th fastest but although he improved on his time, clocking 2:04.92, just outside his season's best of 2:03.6 set in Carshalton in July, it was only enough for 6th place. In the W35 400m Emilie advanced to the semi final as a fastest loser after finishing fourth in her heat in 1:02.71 but just failed to make the final, finishing 4th yet again in her semifinal in 1:01.33; while Mark won his V50 400m heat in 56.17 and was 7th in his semi final in 56.83.  

Heather Jones won a well earned bronze medal in the Surrey Senior Women’s Heptathlon Championship at the David Weir Leisure Centre, Carshalton, last weekend (her first heptathlon since 2012), posting a personal best score of 2482 points. She ended day one in fourth having achieved season’s bests in the 100m hurdles, high jump, shot and 200m, then started day two strongly with personal bests in the long jump and javelin, and was within 100 points of the bronze medal position at the start of the final event, the 800m. 'I ran my fastest 800m for 15 years to snatch the bronze and win the race, too, which was a satisfying end to a tough two days', says Heather. 'Running scared helps! I got a heptathlon PB  but was just shy of the 2500 I had in mind as a target.' 

In the Track Relay Championships during the same event, the senior men’s 4x100m relay team took silver while the girls under 13 4x200m relay squad won the bronze medals. The under 15 girls 4x100m squad missed out on medals by just two-hundredths of a second.

Richard McDowell (pictured with his family) warmed-up for the Bournemouth Marathon in four weeks' time by winning the Surrey Bacchus Marathon over a testing but picturesque course starting and finishing at Denbies Vineyard, Dorking, writes Tom Pollak. McDowell reported that the course consisted of hilly trails and rises 750 metres taking in the North Downs Way. He added: 'Wine was available at frequent intervals – a budget version of Marathon du Medoc in France! This was a hard long training run for me in the run-up to the Bournemouth marathon.' McDowell clocked 2:29.57, finishing more than four minutes ahead of the second runner. He concluded: 'I showed some pretty decent form.  Hopefully I’ll improve in a few weeks time!' 

It was a busy weekend for McDowell. The previous day, he headed home a 550-strong field to win the Wimbledon Common 5km parkrun in a personal best of 15:51. He posted his sixth win in 19 appearances in the event and took four seconds off his previous best. 

Meanwhile at the Woburn Olympic Triathlon on Saturday, which involves a 1500m swim, 44km bike phase and 10.5km run, Richard Evans won his age category (M55-59) finishing 11th overall out of 266 runners in a finish time of 2:36:13. Charles Hampden-Smith was second in the same age category and 27th overall in 2:43:25.

Starting his wedding day in unusual fashion, Freddie Slemeck sliced 16 seconds off his previous best set in December 2011 in heading home a 590-strong Parkrun field at Basingstoke in 15:59. Wedding guests Finn Johnson (16:03) and Jonny Earl (16:20) joined him, finishing second and third. Rob Tuer (17:55) won on his debut appearance at Andover and Joe Toomey headed a 519-strong field home on Tooting Common. Fran Clarke (20:34) and Elena Dauster (20:00) were top women finishers at Kingston and Fulham Palace. Jonny Cornish returned to racing after a two month break which involved a month’s touring India by finishing fourth out of 1288 runners in Bushy Park in 16:08. He has won the Bushy Park event 19 times since his debut there in June 2015.

Results

Sat/Sun 8/9 September Surrey County Track Relay Championships, Carshalton Full results

Sat/Sun 8/9 September Surrey County Combined Events Championships, Carshalton Full results

Sun 9 September: Bournemouth AC Open, 200m race 1: 2. Jaran Finn, V45 (2nd claim) 27.7 (pb)