Weekend Round Up: Hill Champs Medals, CSSAL and GAA Meets

This weekend’s action began for Shettleston athletes at the Glasgow Athletics Association Miler Meet at Crownpoint in Glasgow. The event included heats in 800m and 3000m with the Scottish Athletics U17 and U20 3000m Championships incorporated within the meeting. 

Several Shettleston athletes were on the start list with Zoe Roberts and Sam Lesley in the 800m and Philip Neilson, Callum Butterworth, Aoife Carr, Ross Good, Daniel Bradford and Jonathan Moore in the 3000m. 

Image: GAA/Scottish Athletics

On Saturday attention turned to the sprinters with GAA’s Sprint Gala. After running unconventional distances at the last Sprint Gala the programme returned to a more traditional format with  two rounds of 100m heats, 300m and 400m flat races as well as the same distances over hurdles. There was also a Triple Jump competition included in the timetable.

The busiest athlete of the day was Tanatorn Longjamnong who race in both rounds of the 100m as well as competing in the Triple Jump.

Kara Lindsay (U17W) ran the 100m and was joined by Emma Baird in the 400m hurdles. In the 100m Tanatorn competed in both rounds along with Clive Ke, Arif Chapiti, Emmanuel Nyamekye and Gkontouin Imante.

Full results have yet to be published for both events.

Annie Maclean was also in action on Saturday in the National Athletics League Premiership Round 1 at the Thames Valley Athletics Centre in Eton. Running as part of the Glasgow Jaguars team Annie raced in a non scoring 400m event, winning in a personal best and new U20W club record time of 55.99. She was also part of the winning team in the 4x400m relay.

The senior Scottish Athletics Hill Running Championships were held on Sunday at the Yetholm race, near Kirk Yetholm.

This race starts and finishes just outside of Kirk Yetholm, with the course taking in a circuit of hills around of Halterburn Valley. The outward leg of the circuit contains most the ascent, running over tussocky grassy hills, before much faster running on return leg along parts of the Pennine Way.

Images: Mark H. Rutherford/Norham Running Club

There were several Shettleston Harriers in the field with John Connaghan and Ian Pender on the podium in their age categories.

Iain Pender took silver in the M40 age group of the Scottish Championships and John Connaghan shared the gold with Drew Sharkey (Carnethy) in the M50 category. Shettleston’s men also took the silver medal, finishing second, in the team’s competition.

Overall it was a great day for Shettleston with five runners in the top 20, Harry Pulham being the best placed in fifth overall. Harry’s race time of 1:05:27 was just over a minute from the podium places. Ryad Chebbout was seventh, Fred Davies 11th, Steve Halsall 13th and Dan Dry finished in 20th. Elena Heger was our first woman home in 50th overall and sixth in the senior women’s competition.

Full race results from Yetholm can be found here with a full report including last week’s Kilpatrick Hills success for Elena and Ryad and the Jura Fell race here.

The club returned to Kilmarnock for the third week in four on Sunday for Match 2 of the Central and Southern Scotland Athletics League Division 1 on a typically blustery day at the Ayrshire Athletics Arena. 

Some of our U11 athletes were competing for the first time and many of the older athletes were taking part in events for the first time as well. Despite the conditions a number of athletes recorded personal bests in their events.

Personal Best Results

Full results

The club finished seventh on the day and remains seventh overall in the League. The third and final event will be held on Sunday August 10th where we will need to move up at least one place in the League to retain our place in Division 1

The week ahead sees the continuation of school’s track and field championships for many of our younger athletes with both secondary and primary schools replay championships and the secondary schools pentathalon at Grangemouth next weekend.