Surrey Sweep

HW celebrated a record four titles at the Surrey County Road Relay Championships at Wimbledon Park last weekend.

The Senior Men's team took the title for the first time since 2014, having finished runners up to South London Harriers on each subsequent occasion (apart from taking bronze in 2016 behind SLH and Belgrave Harriers). Finally, however, on Saturday, the team of Andrew Penney, Richard McDowell, Fred Slemeck, Finn Johnson, Jackson Creegan and Joe Croft (above) nailed the win over Guildford & Godalming and Belgrave, with SLH for once finishing outside the medals.

The W35 team of Estle Viljoen, Gina Galbraith, Annmarie Seymour and Claire Grima (in her first race back following injury) made up for the lack of a senior women's team by winning their event, while in the M40 team, Claire's husband Dave topped up the Grima household's medal collection further as he also took gold along with Justin Reid, Simon Wade and Richard McDowell (yes, Richard again, on his second leg of the day!)

Not to be outdone, Anna Garnier, Alison Purnell and Lisa Thomas won the W55 event, while the M60 team of Peter Giles, Barry King and Tony Austin just missed out on an HW clean sweep, finishing in fourth.

Below: Joe Croft bringing the senior men’s team home

Given his 100-mile trail racing exploits earlier in the year it should come as no surprise that Richard McDowell stepped up to run a leg for both the Senior Men's team and the M40 team, taking the award for the fastest V40 leg along the way with13:59, just one second down on the overall fastest leg of the day posted by Croydon's Peter Chambers. 'Encouraging and frustrating in equal measure!" says Richard (pictured below, at the finish of his second 3-mile loop of the day, for the winning M40 team.).

'Four weeks out from the London Marathon, I'd normally be deep into training, carrying a lot of fatigue with successive 100-mile weeks,' he continues. 'This year however I haven't been following any formal training schedule since my 100 mile-exploit in May, and have been playing things very much by ear'.

Having run 'pretty well' (he means notching up a PB!) at the HW 5000m Festival Night, and 'feeling pretty fresh at the moment', he admits he was 'fairly confident' that he would run well in the relays. And so it proved.

In the senior race, he took over in third place from lead runner Andrew Penney, who completed the 3-mile (approx) course in 14:38, on his welcome return to the team. By the time Richard was halfway round Wimbledon Park heading back towards the stadium he had overhauled the leader, James Share, of Guildford & Godalming to hand over a 13-second lead to Fred Slemeck (14:46). Finn Johnson (15:43) handed over to newcomer to the squad, Jackson Creegan, who posted an impressive 14:36, and on the final leg Joe Croft brought the team home in 14:40, 14 seconds clear of G&G in second position.

With only around 20 minutes to recover, Richard was out again on leg 4 for the M40 team. 'This was considerably more enjoyable', he admits, 'as there was much less pressure to perform and our team was incredibly dominant, posting the fastest four M40 legs of the day. My personal goal was to be less than a minute slower than on my first leg, and I just about managed that with 14:44!' All of which bodes well as the clock ticks down to the London Marathon on October 3rd.

'According to Strava I’ve run this loop six times, the first being in 2015 and I've generally got gradually faster, but my first leg on Saturday was a clear outlier: nearly a minute faster than my previous best time, and even my second leg was quicker than all of my previous runs' says Richard. 'The next outing is for the Southern 6-Stage Relays at Crystal Palace (26 September), and then the London Marathon, where hopefully form over the shorter distances will convert to a decent performance!'

It was a good day for HW Chairman Dave Clarke to be on medal presentation duty. Above, celebrating with the Senior Men's team, below left, with the M40 team (minus Simon Wade); and, right, with Richard Clark and Peter Collins (minus Ben Revill and Brian Lynch) from the bronze-winning M50 team.

In her first race since March 2020, Claire Grima was still able to post the fastest leg of the winning W35 quartet (17:46) by a whisker over Gina Galbraith, who ran the third leg in 17:47, taking over from Estle Viljoen (19:44). Annmarie Seymour brought the team home in 20:52 . 'Having had nine months off from running last year due to a stress fracture, I was really excited to be able to get out racing for Hercules again, particularly on home turf,' says Claire, 'and it was lovely to see so many familiar faces from all the different clubs.

'I have been very slowly building up the mileage over the course of 2021, then recently picked it up a bit, and I have had a couple of training sessions with Anne Hegvold's group which must have helped,' she says. Nevertheless, she admits, 'I really had no idea what speed I would be able to run as I hadn't raced for 18 months, but I didn't have much time to get nervous being on the first leg! I went out nice and steady but had enough in the tank to overtake a few women on my way round!'

Full results


Below, top: Gina Galbraith takes over from Estle Viljoen in the W35 team, and left: Estle, Gina, Annmarie and Claire with their gold medals. Below right: the victorious W55 team of Alison Purnell, Anna Garnier and Lisa Thomas.

SAL Review of the Season

The last SAL match of the season may have seen HW just pipped into second place by Epsom & Ewell, but two out of three wins was a welcome result at the end of a late-starting league season in which the Covid pandemic dictated only three fixtures and no relegation or promotion.

‘All in all it was a great, spirited team performance, with many of the Club’s youngsters taking part for the first time and having a go at multiple events, and lots of PBs,' says team manager, Keith Scofield. 'In the league table as a whole we finished 24th out of 96 clubs which is pretty good; though next year when we go back to stronger local leagues with promotion and relegation, we will need to step up a gear.

‘That said I think we can go into next season feeling really positive; but we need to fill some voids – we are especially lacking hurdlers and 400m runners, and are still not filling some field events, so before the start of next season we plan to have some ‘come and try’ sessions at the track so everyone has a chance to have a go at new event.

‘One thing I really noticed was a shyness to step up from being a non-scorer to a scorer if needed', he says. 'It often happens that someone doesn’t turn up at the last minute for whatever reason, and no one should think they aren’t good enough to take their place, or worry that someone is going to say 'you let the side down', if you only manage one point. Trust me, everyone will be really grateful! One point can be the difference between winning and coming second; so my message for next season is just 'put your reservations to one side, be bold and give it all for the team!’'


Below, celebrating an impressive SAL campaign with coach Dermot Dunne and wife Yvonne, recovering brilliantly from the serious injuries she sustained when she and Dermot were hit by a car crossing the road last year.

Mission accomplished

With the season almost over, having been hampered by injury in March, and chances running out, Lisa Thomas finally achieved her goal of claiming the world W55 2000m Steeplechase record. Pending the completion of the formal ratification process, her time of 7:51.91, set at Perivale, smashed the previous record of 7:58.43 set by Margaret Orman of New Zealand, which has stood since 1979.

Above, top: Lisa with proud coach Dermot Dunne; and celebrating with the sprint group – including a guest appearance from former lead coach Geoff Walcott! Geoff of course knows a thing or two about records, having won gold with the world record-breaking M55 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m teams at the World Masters Championships in Riccione, Italy in 2007.


The following weekend, Lisa made her mark on the 2000m steeplechase yet again, winning gold at the British Masters Championships in Derby and clocking in 7:52.12. Anna Garnier also took gold in the W65 800m in 3:05.29, with Anna and M75 Peter Giles both posting the fastest times by British athletes in their age groups this summer, as Peter clocked 5:58.67 to take the 1500m title.

Below: Anna and Lisa after the British Masters Championships