Top 10 at National Road Relays for TVH’s Girls
The strength of the TVH girls teams show that we will be serious contenders in the near future.
Out Under 17 Women’s team once again showed that we have some great athletes. After last year’s sixth place in the National Road Relay we hoped to equal our recent Southern Relay position of 12th. Again without India Weir we exceeded our target by finishing a superb 10th. Alice Harray coming back to form after a broken toe had a great first lap to run over a minute faster than last year. Her 13th place set up Kosana Weir to have a nice set of runners to chase round the 3800m course. Making up seven places she brought the team home sixth. With the pack now chasing Verity Walker she had to give way to four faster girls and still brought the team home a creditable tenth.
Tenth place for the under 15 girls was also a remarkable achievement. Charlotte Buckley ran 16 seconds faster than last year when she finished fifth. This year her seventh position was two seconds faster than her previous best lap of this course. Although she lost eight places, Lily Salkeld did not disgrace herself and in fact left the girls in front nicely lined up for Ava White. Not only did she get the team into 10th place but she was also 9th fastest girl in the whole race. For the ‘B’ team, Philippine Poupart-Lafarge with a time of 15:24 was 1min 46sec faster than last year. With a growth of 12 inches what does that equate? Having her first relay, Niamh Murphy is also getting back from injury. Unfortunately we didn’t have a third runner.
Also without a third runner the under 13 boys had Basil Rock on the first lap. He finished 27th out of 63 starters and was disappointed to find that the Bedford boy he had been beat in the 1500m on the track, came home first. Alfie Turner lost just three places to finish 30th.
For the under 13 girls relay we had two teams. On lap one, Zakia Mossi had a great run to finish 15th. This bettered her last year’s time by almost two minutes. Although Lily Dafter ran very well she was unfortunate to lose 10 places in perhaps the longest distance she has ever run. Club runner of the day was Kate Price who had been told by her physio that she must not run on her injury, but she was determined to do this race before resting. Even though she said, she was just running round, she picked up two place to bring the team home 23rd out of 56 teams. The ‘B’ team had Olivia Colegrave finishing in 64th place before Kaisa Hanni also having her longest race, brought the team up to 58th. Mabel Salkeld, brought in at the last minute then came home 54th. All in all, a very pleasing day with no one having a bad run.
Under 13 Boys 3800m.
27 B Rock 14:29; 30 A Turner 15:22
Under 13 Girls
15 Z Mossi 15:18; 25 L Dafter 16:36; 23 K Price 16:14. Team 23rd 48:08
64 Olivia Colegrave 18:19; 58 K Hanni 17:30; 54 M Salkeld 19:57. Team 54th 55:48
Under 15 Girls
7 C Buckley 14:08; 15 L Salkeld 16:06; 10 A White (9th f) 14:03. Team 10th 44:17
33 P Poupart-Lafarge 15:24; 40 N Murphy 16:07
Under 17 Women
13 A Harray 14:42; 6 K Weir 14:21; 10 V Walker 15:37. Team 10th 44:40