Start Fitness North Eastern Grand Prix

Joe Dowd

Ten  new personal bests were achieved amongst the performances by fifteen Morpeth Harriers in action at the fourth meeting in the series of Start Fitness sponsored North Eastern Grand Prix events, held at Gateshead’s International Stadium, on Wednesday 1st July 2015.

Boosted by the recent confirmation that has won his way into the Northumberland squad for the forthcoming English Schools Championships,
Under 15 Boy Joe Dowd has certainly reacted positively with some excellent performances,
and none more so than on this occasion, when he set new figures of 2m08.3s, when crossing the finish line at exactly the same time as Blyth’s Josh Fiddaman in the 800m, and was very unfortunate not to get the judges nod for outright victory. Alongside Dowd, there were another two Morpeth Harriers bests
in the 800m for Matthew Waterfield and Connor Marshall,
who respectively clocked 2m16.3s and 2m20.2s.
Those times gave them fifth and seventh places in the Grand Prix,
and eighth place went to another Morpeth athlete Ross Charlton,
who was marginally adrift of his best performance with 2m27.2s.
Charlton made up for this disappointment however,
by setting new figures in the 200m, with 29.4s.
Marshall had the added satisfaction of taking first place in his heat.

Joe Dowd’s brother Daniel also had a good night,
when he finished third in the Under 13 Boys Javelin,
increasing his best performance to 23.65m,
adding a whole 1.70m to his previous,
and being in the younger half of his age group,
this is superb for the Dave Thomas coached athlete.

In the Under 13 Girls events Morpeth’s Lily Heaton also had
an excellent night by setting new figures of 30.8s in the 200m,
and then finished second in her 800m in 2m36.6s,
only two seconds adrift of her previous best.

Morpeth Harriers athletes were very prominent
finishers in the Junior Men’s Graded 800m.
Nathan Cox was second fastest with 2m00.2s.
James Young clocked 2m02.4s for fourth fastest,
and Joe Elder was fifth fastest, setting new figures of 2m06.6s.

Setting new figures of 2m28.2s, Morpeth Harrier Abby Sheldon
was second fastest Under 17 Woman in her Graded 800m.

Club-mate Amber Cormack also finished second
in the Graded Junior Women’s 800m, clocking 2m25.8s,
which was some way short of her best performance.

In the Under 17 Men’s Graded 200m, Morpeth Harrier Will Kelly
finished as third equal fastest, in a new personal best of 25.0s.

On an improvement scale, Morpeth’s Ellie Coxon made
further good progress, when finishing as eighth fastest
in the Under 15 Girls 800m, in a new personal best time of 2m37.5s.

Morpeth sprinter Daniel Moore had an excellent night
by winning the Senior Men’s Graded 100m in 11.5s,
and he finished an excellent third in the 200m in 23.2s.

Another Morpeth Harrier competing in the Senior Men’s 100m
was Wayne Gedge, who finished as fifth fastest in 13.1s.   

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