Top five finish for morpeth's 12-stage men

Morpeth's Northern 12-stage team

An excellent top five finish for Morpeth’s  Senior Men in the Northern Athletics 12 Stage Road Relay Championships made the long journey across the country to Merseyside on Sunday, 27 March, more than worthwhile.
 
Leaving the North East at a time when most of us were still scratching the sleep from our eyes, rolling over to try and catch up on that loss of a BST hour, it certainly made for one of the earliest starts in the annual calendar.
 
The competition, held once again in Birkenhead Park, Liverpool pits the strongest squads from clubs right across the North of England over twelve legs, four long ones of 8 kilometres and eight short ones of 4k.
 
Held in near perfect conditions of bright, windless Spring sunshine, the race was perhaps unsurprisingly won by the strongest club in the North of England, Leeds City AC with a combined time of 3 hours 4 minutes and 41 seconds. (Indeed, such is the strength of Leeds at the present time that their B team also finished 8th and a further C team 28th.)  The North West’s closest challenge came from Salford Harriers and AC, who were runners up in 3:05:49.
 
Morpeth were headed by Sam Hancox on the first long leg, who put one or two disappointments over the Winter’s cross country season behind him with just the start the club was looking for, coming in in 4th place with a time of 23 minutes 19 seconds, and in the process recording the 9th fastest long leg time of the day.
 
On the first short leg, Ponteland High School sixth former Joe Anderson rose to the challenge of selection for his first ever Senior Relay team,  clocking 12:07 to come home in 8th place.
 
George Lowry moved  the club up two places to 6th on the 3rd , long leg with 23:43, with Ali Douglas maintaining the position on 4th   leg  (11:44), but it was George Rudman on the next long leg who made a medal a realistic prospect with a fine 23:57 to take the club into 4th.
 
In his first ever outing in a blue and white vest since his transfer from Tyne Bridge, new recruit Kieran Reay hung onto the position with an 11:50 clocking as the second half of the race now unfolded, and an in-form Matthew Briggs completed the last long leg in 24:20, handing on to Loughborough University student Dan Melling whose 12:04 kept the team in sight of 3rd.
 
It was Phil Winkler who finally got the club into that medal position, overhauling Blackburn Harriers on the ninth leg with a time of 11:38 with Leeds City and Salford Harriers still in 1st and 2nd.
 
Tom Innes on leg 10 (12:08) and Connor Marshall on leg 11 (11:50) were able to hold off both Hallamshire Harriers and Blackburn Harriers for 3rd,  but with the margins now down to a handful of seconds, it was always going to be a battle royal to hang on to a medal, and with big hitters for both Yorkshire and Lancashire outfits on last leg,  Andy Lawrence (12:19) found himself run down over the final couple of kilometres despite all his best efforts.
 
A final overall time of 3:10:59 put Morpeth in a final position of 5th out of the 43 complete teams taking part, frustratingly only 18 seconds off Blackburn Harriers and AC in 4th and - after over three hours of racing - only 36 seconds off Hallamshire Harriers who took the keenly contested bronze medal.
 
The club will take comfort however from the best 12 stage performance for a number of years and one relished by all those who had travelled, not least watching club President Jim Alder, who also made the journey.
 
There was also a top ten finish for Sunderland Harriers, who came home 9th in 3:3:20 while Heaton Harriers also travelled but were incomplete; neither Gateshead Harriers nor Tyne Bridge put teams out.
 
Held even earlier, the Senior Women’s race, contested over six legs (two long, four short) was won by Vale Royal AC in a time of 1:49:41 from Hallamshire Harriers (1:50:17) and Salford Harriers and AC (1:51:20).
 
With the National 12 stage due to take place in two weeks time at Sutton Park, Birmingham and several of the club’s leading runners hopefully recovered from injuries, the club will be hoping to at least equal, if not better, its achievement from Sunday.
 
***
 
Crossing the finishing line in 3rd place, GB triathlete Daniel Dixon made the podium in his first outing over the Olympic distance as a senior in the Europe Triathlon Cup in Quarteira, Portugal at the weekend.
 
Well placed after the opening swim section, Dan held onto a leading group of thirteen on the bike section along with two fellow GB athletes, Connor Bentley and Sam Dickinson.
 
On the final 10k run, however, he produced a remarkable performance of 30 minutes 50 seconds for a new pb and even managed at one point to get into 2nd place ahead of experienced American triathlete Seth Rider.
 
The race itself was won by Japan’s Takumi Hojo in 1:46:21 with Dan outsprinted in the run-in by Rider, who beat him by a mere three seconds for a final time of 1 hour 46 minutes and 33 seconds.
 
Congratulations on another performance which again made people sit up and take notice. It seems to be only onwards and upwards for him.