Redcar – Northern Road Relays 18th September 2021
It was an early start on Saturday for the 3 hour trip to Redcar, where we had two strong teams representing the club in the Northern Road Relays.
The race this week was a step up in quality from the North West relays the previous week with a good number of competitors all capable of running significantly below a 15 minute 5k, so it was great to be able to field a few strong teams from across the club rather than last week when we had to split Lancashire and Merseyside based athletes.
The man on the tanoy announced 91 of 93 teams had declared and called the athletes running the 1st leg to the start line ready for a 2pm start.
Our 1st leg runners were Sé Loughlin (A) and Mark Wynne (B), a combination of youth and experience with Sé not yet 18 and Mark in the V45 age group. Both athletes gave their teams good starts with Sé finishing in 18:21, which would see him in the top 5 under 20 year olds for the day and Mark in 20:43 for the 6k.
Leg 2 continued the positive starts with Luke Edward’s time of 18:36 (A) pushing the team from 18th position to 14th and Adam Jones (B) finishing in 20:15 clawing back 10 places.
The team’s positions were consolidated in leg 3 when the evergreen Tony O’Brien (A) completed the 6k in 19:17. Fletcher Foster (B) produced a really strong run and helped the team climb a further 2 places finishing in 20:52.
Ross Harrison (B) ran leg 4 and continued the positive upward trend as he moved the team up 5 places as he finished in 18:33. This placed Ross 9th overall in his leg against some strong competition.
Adam Fields (B) produced a time of 21:07 to take the B team upward by a further 3 places.
The individual performance of the day was reserved for leg 5 in the A team as the man who’s come from nowhere, Joe Niven, effortlessly completed the course in 18:03.
Jake Dickinson (B) had a strong finish to the leg and consolidated the team position as he crossed the line in 21:27.
As the final leg commenced Chris Maher (A) was facing 4 of the fastest finishers of the day and delivered a strong 19:30 finish to ensure the “A” team ended the day in 9th place. This meant that the team were ahead of strong Liverpool Harriers, Vale Royal and Warrington teams and have qualified for the National finals in Birmingham on 9 Oct.
Chris Melling (B) finising In 20:59 made sure the team finished a credible 38th.
Amazingly the lads had enough energy to push the team coach onto the service station car park then run to Carnforth train station to get home. Great team building of nothing else!
We’re looking forward to the 9th October when we will be represented in the finals.
See you then !
Kit Loughlin
 Luke Edwards leg 2 |
 Chris Maher leg 6 |
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