Thropton Show was the latest in the season of Northumberland shows, Saturday’s
events including once again the challenging six mile fell race. Heaton Harrier Chris Larkin was overall winner in 49:39 with members of Morpeth Harriers finishing in 3 rd , 4 th and 5 th places behind. Over 40 John Butters placed 3 rd in 57:02 with KEVI sixth former Liam Roche (1:00:26) coming in 4 th . Once again Cat Macdonald, looking very strong ahead of the season’s first cross country fixture next weekend, was fastest female finisher, 5 th overall in 1:00:43 with father Alistair 7 th in 1:01:36. Jane Hodgson was back to winning ways in Sunday’s 42 nd Northumberland Coastal
Run from Beadnell to Alnmouth. This year’s event felt slightly different, with the race moved to September from its traditional spot in July due to bird nesting at the Long Nanny Bird Sanctuary in Beadnell, but it was very much of a case of normal service resumed at the sharp end, with off road specialist and last year’s winner Jarlath Mckenna, now with Tyne Bridge Harriers, romping home in a time of 1 hour 18 minutes 15 seconds, ahead of Blyth’s Michael Stott (1:19:36) and Heaton’s Eddie Knight (1:22:22). There was however a remarkable 6 th victory in the event for Jane, who has very much made the course her own over the years and probably now deserves the title ‘Queen of the Coastal’. This time she placed a remarkable 13 th overall in a time of 1:30:42 with nearest rival Tyne Bridge Harrier Rebecca Blain nearly five minutes behind (1:35:33) and last year’s winner Judith Nutt of Elswick 3 rd (1:37:30). Morpeth’s Shaun Land was first male home from the club, making the top twenty in 18 th place (1:33:00) and picking up a prize as 3 rd Senior. There were 478 finishers. It was good to see Steve Haswell back in competitive action too, 56 th in 1:42:26, with Dave Nicholson 114 th and 3 rd O/65 in 1:51:29, John Clark 123 rd in 1:53:20 and Gary Mason 196 th in 2:0053. Anna Wright and Jane Briggs both picked up prizes, Anna coming back in 71 st place and picking up a 2 nd O/40 prize into the bargain (1:45:20) and Jane 143 rd and 2 nd 0/50 in 1:55:35. Fran Naylor was 373 rd in 2:23:18. Finishing fifth in the Modern Pentathlon Junior World Championships at Druskininkai, Lithuania at the weekend, Ross Charlton also took his share of a well won Team Silver with his GB colleagues. With all four members of the team having made it through the qualifying rounds held earlier in the week, some thirty six competitors lined up for Saturday’s final. Charlton began the event well, scoring nineteen wins against sixteen defeats in the fencing and adding a further three victories in the bonus round. The day’s second challenge was the relatively new Obstacle Course Racing, due to replace the traditional Horse Riding after 2024’s Paris Olympics. However, as Pentathlon GB have twin tracked Ross as both a Junior and a Senior competitor, he had largely focused on Show Jumping this year while many of his younger rivals had practised extensively over the new OCR. All of this meant he remained a relative novice over the format and posted a fairly modest time of 44 seconds. He slipped further back down the leader board in the 200m freestyle swim, falling to 28th place after the third of the five events with only the combined 3000m Laser Run still to come. Always a fine runner from his early days with Morpeth Harriers, where he formed part of a group that included triathlete Dan Dixon and which was coached by the late Tony Ward, Charlton stormed to the fastest time of the competition, 9 minutes 47 seconds, only a second outside of his own Junior World Record. The run took him to 5th place overall and only 11 seconds off the podium, Ross first home for Team GB, whose next 6th and 11th individual places meant the team finished in 2nd place behind winners France with Ukraine 3rd . A delighted Ross is now looking forward to a couple of weeks of well earned rest and recuperation before resuming his training with an eye on 2024. A busy three days of the Great North Run weekend saw members of Morpeth Harriers win big races on both Friday and Saturday, with over two dozen then forming part of the 60,000 who took on Sunday’s half marathon from Newcastle to South Shields.
Action got underway on Friday night with elite races over one mile and 5k broadcast live on the BBC and forming part of the UK Road Championships, with the prospect of selection for the GB team in the inaugural World Athletics Road Running Championships in Latvia next month the prize on offer for race winners. First up was James Young in a one-mile race over a course that started near the Guildhall, went out over the Swing Bridge to the South bank of the Tyne before crossing back over the Millenium Bridge to the finish line. Always up with the leaders, James looked well placed throughout, but lost out in the closing stages of the race; Callum Elson of Cambridge and Coleridge winning in 4 minutes 8 seconds with Young unfortunately squeezed out into fourth place in the run-in. The Women’s 5k Championship that followed saw Swansea’s Verity Ockenden win impressively in a time of 15:26. Scott Beattie and Rory Leonard lined up in the third race of the night, the Men’s 5k race over the same course. The two club colleagues are both currently in fine form and were clearly determined to give good accounts of themselves on home turf, Beattie having already won the Quayside 5k over much of the same territory the previous month and Leonard having taken European U/23 Gold over 10,000m on the track. With Rory pushing the pace at the front on the second of the three laps, the small field gradually spread out, but it was Scott who produced a hugely impressive late surge over the Millennium Bridge to show a clean pair of heels to his rivals. He went on to win in a time of 13 minutes 56 seconds, some four seconds ahead of Stroud AC’s Tom Mortimer with Rory taking third place in 14:03. The win sees Beattie secure his place on the plane to Riga for his first GB vest. Interviewed later, both athletes spoke enthusiastically about the pleasure of competing in front of friends and family in such a picturesque setting, the near perfect conditions only enhancing the experience. There was another fine Friday night performance later in the mass participation Great North 5k race that followed, with Peter Smallcombe narrowly beaten into 2nd place by a two-second margin by Luke Davis of Western Tempo, who won in 15:24. Super Saturday’s Junior and Mini Great North Run events, with thousands taking part, were spearheaded by another win by an in-form Harrier in blue and white, Elliot Kelso winning in a time of 12 minutes 49 second for the 4k course, over ten seconds ahead of his nearest rival. The day’s races were split into colour-coded., age-related waves, with results here: Daniel Scott, 23rd in 15:31; Kate Kennedy, 61st in 16:27; Faye Heatley, 9th in 17:18; Jacob Thompson, 72nd in 18:37; Erin Burns, 49th in 19:52; Emily Vermaas, 23:08 (places given according to age-graded waves). The headlines on Sunday were always going to be taken by Sir Mo Farah in his last ever competitive outing, Farah finishing 4th in a time of 1 hour 1 minute 54 seconds, with Ethiopian Tamirat Tola breaking the one-hour mark to win in 59:58, with the women’s race won by Kenyan Peres Jepchirchir in 1:06:45, with Charlotte Purdue first British runner back in 3rd in a time of 1:09:36. Conditions for Sunday were, however, certainly the most challenging that runners could remember, with punishingly high temperatures affecting many people's hoped-for times and expectations having to be adjusted accordingly; as Rob Hancox succinctly put it later: ‘it was brutal out there.’ Nevertheless, Carl Avery had yet another top notch run to finish just outside the top ten in 14th place in a time of 1:07:17 with Lawrence McCourt only two places behind him in 1:07:36. Carl and Lawrence were also the first two runners home from the North East of England. Not too far behind was training companion Finn Brodie, 30th in 1:09:56, with Sam Hancox, 34th in 1:10:31, and Tom Prentice,47th in 1:13:05, all making the top 50. Thereafter other finishers included: Chris Parr, 54th in 1:13:34; Ali Douglas, 92nd in 1:16:31; Ross Floyd, back in competitive action in a very respectable 1:18:37 for 130th; Marks Snowball and Banks, 442nd and 44th in 1:25:50/51; Andrew Hebden, 488th in 1:26:20; Rob Hancox, 1166th in 1:33:27; Connor Hall, 1353rd in 1:34:53; Jake Parmley, 1822nd in 1:37:52; Ben Clarke, 2165th in 1:39:33; Dave Swinburne, 2707th in 1:42:04; Gary Mason, 4939th in 1:49:19; Will Clark, 6987th in 1:54:10; Matty Boyle, 7264th in 1:54:57; Paul Turnbull, 7270th in 1:54:57; Roderick Bruce, 12483rd in 2:04:53 and Arjan Piet, 17035th in 2:12:50. Kirsty Burville was the club’s first female finisher with an excellent run of 1:33:29 for 1170th, with Anna Wright 1725th (1:37:17) and Tayla Douglas 1918th (1:38:25). In her first GNR, sixth-former Caitlin Flanagan was 3106th in 1:43:44, Linzi Quinn 4767th in 1:48:51, Laura Mclean 4954th in 1:49:21, Julie Vermaas 5037th in 1:49:35 and Mhairi Line 11748th in 2:03:34. Sadly, as if the oppressive heat hadn’t been enough of an ordeal, the heavens then opened and, with the journey back from South Shields affected by flash-flooding and many Metro stations closed, the return home proved to be as much of a challenge as the race itself. For all the weekend's results see here. The first fixture in the new NEHL season takes place at Wrekenton once again on Saturday 23 September, with the second at Druridge Bay on Sunday 15 October.
Entry is free to all paid-up members of the club and we would encourage as many as possible Young, Senior and Veteran athletes to be involved: success at XC is nearly always about getting the numbers out, not just those who’ll make the counters. Full details are on the NEHL website here. Packs for this season can be found by clicking on the Runner Information heading and scrolling down to Morpeth Harriers. If you are new to the club, your name will need adding to the Morpeth list. You can do this by:
This is one of the few occasions where we get to see the club operating across all the age ranges, male and female, and we hope to have another successful season. See you there! |
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