Tracy Barlow finishes 3rd GB athlete at Elite London Marathon
Andrew Mitchell runs marathon PB at Dorney Lake, Harrow and Dagenham open meetings
The London Marathon elite race took place on Sunday 4th October with 20 laps of a course around St James’s Park. Tracy Barlow lined up at the start of the women’s race at 7.15am in exactly the conditions she didn’t want; a cold morning with heavy rain. Tracy reached halfway in just under 75 mins, but the conditions only eased slightly through the race and several athletes found it too tough and dropped out. Tracy persevered finishing numb with the cold in 2:34.42, 15th overall and 3rd GB athlete a minute behind Natasha Cockram and Naomi Mitchell. We wish Tracy a speedy recovery and much better conditions for her next race.
M50 athlete Andrew Mitchell has also trained hard for his first marathon since 2017, entering races in Boston, Lincs and then Wrexham that were both cancelled before finding a race with laps around Dorney Lake. Conditions were better for the 9am start at Dorney than the earlier start for Tracy and Andrew ran a well-paced race, finishing 23rd of the 500+ runners (starting in different waves) and 2nd M50 in a time of 2:38.50, more than 2 mins quicker than his previous best.
Track Open Meetings have continued into October with races at Harrow and Dagenham this week. On Saturday 3rd October young athletes raced over 1500m and 800m at Dagenham. Basil Rock continues to improve, knocking another 4 seconds off his 1500m PB with 4:12.57. Max Bishop was unable to get a place in Basil’s race and had to run a solo race, finishing 14 secs ahead of the 2nd place athlete in another club record of 4:18.41. In the 800m, U15 Maya Sutaria is learning about the event, spending much of the race boxed in and running 2:31.01 but helped U13 Skye Bishop (returning to the venue where she fell heavily) run a new PB of 2:32.77, a 5 sec improvement.
At Harrow on 1st October, in the 3000m Antonio Silva ran his best time of the season with 8:36.12 and U15 Ava Levy ran 12:17.52, nearly 20 secs quicker than in the Middlesex Virtual races 3 weeks earlier. U17 Louis Hodge was our quickest young athlete in the Mile races with 4:31.52. Anna Kelly, Zenia Gordon and Natasha Bennett were all in the same race, with Anna the quickest in 5:50.77.