The results of our over-35s athletics meeting at Tonbridge on 7th July have just gone onto the Power of 10 website (at full results), writes Gary Walsh. There were 6 team members: Rebecca Pickard, Gary Walsh, Graham Dwyer, Jon Maxim, Keith Dowson and Paul Fanti. Everyone achieved either a race win, a PB or a Club Best performance, details below!
Once again, Rebecca was the sole representative on the women’s team, her events being 400m and 3000m. She finished 1st in the W35A 400m in 70.1 seconds, a new PB and an improvement on her own W45 Club Best performance from earlier in the season. She also finished 1st in the W35A 3000m (her first ever race at the distance!), knocking more than 50 seconds off the previous W45 Club Best!
In the men's 400m Gary finished 5th in the M35A race in a new PB of 74.9 seconds, Jon finished 4th in the M35B race in a PB of 69.4 seconds, and Graham put in an outstanding performance in the M50 race to finish 1st in 65.8 seconds! The sprints took their toll, with Gary aggravating a foot injury within the first few strides and Graham tweaking a hamstring after 50m - Graham valiantly continued in the remaining events but Gary's night was over.
In the men's 3000m, Keith put in a highly impressive performance to finish 1st in the M60 race in 11:53.7!
In the field events, Jon finished 4th in the M35 Hammer with a throw of 9.31m, Graham (with a visibly tweaked hamstring) finished 5th in the M50 Triple Jump with 8.13m, and Keith finished a strong 3rd in the M50 Hammer with a new M60 Club Best throw of 16.84m, extending his PB by nearly 2m!
The meeting ended with the 4x400m relay, and once again we were able to field a team - 3 out of 3 relays so far this season! The team (Graham, Jon, Keith and Paul) finished in 5th place in 4:46.3 which beat the existing M45 Club Best by 1.5 seconds! Special thanks to Graham for bravely running with his injured hamstring and to Keith for stepping in to replace the broken Gary!
With the significant points scored, and Swanley/Eynesford once again not fielding any athletes on the night, the men's team further strengthened our 5th place in Division 2. In the women's competition, Rebecca has single-handedly put us up to 5th place in Division 2 ahead of Swanley/Eynesford!
The final meeting of the season will be at Dartford on Friday 28th July with the following events:
(6:45) 800m W, long jump M, high jump W, shot put M, discus W;
(7.25) 800m M;
(8.00) long jump W, discus M;
(8.05) 100m W;
(8.25) 100m M;
(8.45) 4x200m relay W;
(9:05) 4x200m relay M.
Geoffrey will issue a call for athletes nearer the time - it'd be great if we could get a good turnout and field relay teams yet again! (And they're all short races so you could do them all and still barely run more than a kilometre - you'll run further in the warm-up :-)
