Club racing returns! Sadly at Sutcliffe Park as Ladywell Arena remains closed – come on Lewisham Council & GLL! Thanks to Shanice at GLL and the KAC volunteers, for making it a great event, brilliant to see a sea of blue vests back on a track. Report from Ben Cook
…big thanks to everyone that made this great evening happen, Rob Laing, John Barron, Dan Pettitt, Len, Heather, Dave, Simon, Kate, Rowan and everyone else that helped out in this really odd year.
Now on to the races, the results are attached but as always, these only tell half a story. Race 1 was very exciting and saw lots of new club members running. Timothy Ssali took the race out hard and had the handful of spectators wondering whether he was going to be able to hold on to the end and Gary Sullivan, always a canny racer, seemed to smell blood in the water. However after a dip in the third lap Timo managed to find a strong last lap for the win, closely followed by new club American import Louis Wampler with Gary just behind him.
The race also saw some great performances from Susie Fairbrass to run a PB and Nicky Hayes who ran in her first ever 1500m with a performance that will see her go 7th in the UK in her category.
The second race was just as exciting, Sarah Hanley took the race on and looked like she was going to win, however Laurie Garrett ran an incredibly strong last lap to win with Sarah just behind him. This race was the battle of Kent AC’s v50 men with Paul Crompton showing utter disdain for rank and coming in 6 seconds ahead of our illustrious president Alan Curtis who in turn got the better of Paul McCrone. There were two other notable performances in this race, Dee O’Brian’s run will put her in 7th place on the all important Power of 10 rankings and Jo Mott who turned up late for the first race and ran in the second race running a whole minute faster than her predicted time.
The final race of the evening was an absolute peach with Joe Hartley taking it out hard, leaving us all wondering if he would be able to hold off Chris McGurk who was fresh off a 10k PB last Sunday, however, reminiscent of Timothy Cheruiyot in Monaco the other week, Joe managed to find the strength to hold Chris off for a fantastic win. Another notable performance from Clare Elms to be crowned club champion with her time fractionally faster than Sarah Hanley’s.
Finally, at the end of the evening we had two 200m races with Nathan Stevens really showing us what proper sprinting looks like, but there were also notable performances from Louis Wampler and Joseph Yee. Finally, Dee O’Brian, who had decided to enter at the last minute ran 33.3 to become club champion and put herself just outside the top 20 on Po10.
Ben Cook & Rob Laing