Magnificent Seventh

The Club's Senior men's A team produced their best performance for a generation in the South of England 12-stage Road Relay Championships at Milton Keynes on Sunday, 24 March, finishing seventh out of the 53 competing teams, the first time in the top 10 for more than 20 years (the previous best position was 11th in 2014). The overall time of 4:03:17 was a massive improvement on the previous best of 4:20:29 set in 2014. 

The event, in which athletes run alternate long (7.664km) legs and short (5.053km) legs, sees changing fortunes for every team throughout the afternoon, and the A team made a solid start with Andrew Penney handing over in 10th on the opening long leg in 23:51, which proved to be the fastest long leg stage on the day by a HW runner. On the next (short) leg Elliot Palmer (15:48) gained two places, while Belal Ahmed (24:25) ran a great paced third leg to bring the team up to sixth.

Dimos Evangelidis ran a storming fourth leg in 15:58 to lift the team to fifth, posting the fifth fastest time of his leg. Fred Slemeck (25:04) handed over in eighth place to former Olympian Ross Murray on his debut race for the Club. Murray, who raced in the 1500m at the London 2012 Games, clocked 16:00, also posting the fifth best time on his stage to bring the team back up to sixth. 

Finn Johnson (25:21) ran himself to near exhaustion handing over in eighth to Jonny Earl (16:01) who moved up to seventh on stage eight. Jonny Cornish (24:30) gained a further place to hand over in sixth spot at the end of the ninth leg. Howell Craske (15:39)  held that position with the fourth fastest time on stage 10, while Tom Jervis (25:02) came in seventh on the penultimate leg before Charlie Eastaugh (15:38) anchored the team home with the second fastest time for his stage and the fastest HW short leg time of the day. 

Ross Franks, also making his debut for the Club, was the outstanding member of the B team, clocking 15.44 on the second (short) leg, moving through from 39th to 25th spot. 

The team finished 30th in 4:27.50, but were ultimately disqualified after Liam White took a wrong turn and went off course on leg eight.

Results

Sunday 24 March: South of England 12-Stage Road Relay Championships, Milton Keynes   Full results

parkrun

Gina Galbraith was the top woman finisher in the Dulwich Park 5km parkrun in yet another personal best of 17:45. She beat the second woman by more than a minute as she also chopped more than a minute off her previous best time for the course of 18:58 set in December. Her time was the 50th fastest in the country this year across all age groups, and placed her in the top ten best women’s performances for the third week running. 

Adam Harwood was the best of 16 HW runners in action on Wimbledon Common finishing 13th out of 479 runners in19:54. Simon Woodley was sixth out of 279 runners in the Osterley parkrun in19:09, running in the event for the first time.

In his first race since running in the Chester Marathon last October Felix Allen was 36th out of 297 runners in the Forest Rec parkrun in Nottingham.