 Gavin and Les at Jarrow The annual North East Masters Athletics Association Road Relays, held at Bedewell Park, Jarrow last Wednesday, proved to be a happy hunting ground once again for some of the veteran athletes from Morpeth Harriers, with the club picking up some four team and eight individual medals across the two races.
In the night’s first race, for Women and Men Over 65, evergreen Gavin Bayne led the club to a comprehensive victory in the category, his clocking of 12 minutes 5 seconds for the three kilometre course the fastest in the 65s, with David Nicholson (12:27, 2nd fastest) and Les Cavill (13:50) making up the winning team. The total time of 38:22 placed the team 4th overall in the race, which was won by Tyne Bridge Harriers O/45s, for whom Alison Dargie ran the evening’s fastest Race 1 time of 11:43, with Rachael Perowne (13:02) and Kathryn Stevenson (12:08) making up the rest of the team (36:53). South Shields’s 35s and 45s scrapped it out for 2nd and 3rd, with the older team 2nd (by one second) on the line. In the same race, Shuna Rank recorded the second fastest O/55 time of the evening (13:55) and also picked up a team Bronze along with team mates Margaret Macdonald (16:01) and Pam Woodcock (17:22), with Pam also winning the O/70 individual Gold. Spare a thought for poor Claire Calverley, running on her own in an incomplete O/45s (13:32) but determined to turn out all the same having organised the women. In Race 2, over the same distance but for all Men between the ages of 35 and 64, there was plenty of testosterone flying and not a few pointy elbows at the sharp end, with Sunderland, Gateshead and TBH all fighting at the front. In the end, perhaps unsurprisingly, Sunderland’s O/35s (29:07) won out ahead of TBH (30:01) and Gateshead (30:31), with Liam Taylor’s 9:34 fastest of the night. Morpeth’s O/35s were 14th in this most keenly contested category, with O/40s Anthony Jannetta (10:43) and Colin Archer (10:57) out first and O/50 Jason Dawson happy to make up the team on leg 3 (11:55). There was, however, more model success with the club’s Over 45s missing out on a team Gold by a margin of only 4 seconds to South Shields Harriers and having to settle for Silver when finishing 9th overall. New recruit to the club Andrew Ball had an excellent run out to record the evening’s second fastest O/45 time of 19:17 (also the club’s fastest of the night) with Lee Bennett (10:43, 4th fastest O/50) and John Butters (11:17) picking up their share of the O/45 team medals. There was also a team Silver for Morpeth’s O/55s, with Alistair Macdonald (12:00) and Rob Hancox (12:04) recording second and third fastest O/55 times, and Neil MacAnany the third fastest O/60 (11:49). A good evening’s racing as ever among fellow vets – well done to all. Comments are closed.
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