Weekly Round Up w/e 23rd April

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Club Championship Points can be found here

Race Result

You will have seen that our Track will be unavailable to train on as it undergoes a full refurbishment from March 13th. Work has actually already started with the lighting in and around the athletics track. We expect the work to happen over a 12 week period so should be complete by the end of May, if not sooner!

New Tarmac has been overlaid at the track

The Training page on the website continues to be updated to reflect any temporary arrangements, but if you have any questions at all on the sessions below, please speak directly with your coach

You will have seen that the membership renewals have now gone out and Tom has communicated with you all about how to renew these. Our Track with new facilities should be complete by the end of May and we should all see the benefit of having a new track and structure of the complex moving forward. We are looking at the cost for track membership to ensure we remain competitive and still offer excellent value for money with new higher tariffs imposed on the club. These higher costs will also ensure that the track is maintained and cleaned to ensure we have the best track around for at least the next 20 years and with security fencing around the track and no football on the centre pitch we are confident that this will be great news for Darlington Harriers now and in the future. As a reminder OF THE KEY DATES from Tom;

• 1^st April – England Athletics will mark all memberships for renewal – COMPLETED
• 2^nd April – DHAC will email out a payment link from EA to renew. You have until 1^st May to complete payment (reminder emails may be sent during this time). Your payment amount will be based on your existing membership unless you advise otherwise.
• 30^th April – Final reminder sent to all members yet to make payment
• 2^nd May – Members that did not renew will be marked as such, and their accounts will be resigned from the club on both the EA portal and the club website

After the 2^nd May 2023, you are free to re-join at any time by reapplying via https://darlingtonharriers.com/join/

Thank you to everyone in advance for (hopefully) making this as seamless as possible, but if you have any questions at all, please drop a message to 07458 125 721 via WhatsApp/SMS.

DON’T FORGET THERE ARE SPACES AVAILABLE ON THE BUS FOR SUNDERLAND EVENTS, MICHAEL WATSON IS OUR CONTACT FOR THIS SO PLEASE REACH OUT TO HIM IF YOU ARE INTERESTED mikewatson0609@hotmail.com

To start the London marathon weekend, Saturday’s rehearsal was the Mini marathon for the younger athletes, a 2.6km run for school years 5 to 12 and one mile for pupils in reception to year 7. We had 4 of our younger athletes in action all who did superb, congratulations to you all. The North East boys also achieved 3rd place in the British road race challenge team event.

• Rowan Steel – 151st in the boys U13 race in 8:38
• Matthew Foster – 168th in the boys U13 race in 8:52
• Zara Jones – 129th in the girls U15 race in 9:29
• Macy Kelly – 106th in the girls U17 race in 9:22

Photos below, (pic 1) Matthew giving it all towards the finish, (pic 2) Matthew and Rowan far left, (pic 3) Zara 2nd from left and (pic 4) Macy far right.

London marathon is one of the big six world marathons (Berlin, Chicago, Boston, New York and Tokyo being the other five) and each year it’s getting bigger and bigger with over 48600 people completing the course this year. The course which has multiple starting points before merging in the first few miles has incredible crowd support from start to finish with several hundred thousand of people around course. On the day of the race conditions were a little wet but on the whole, excellent for runners with cool conditions and no wind to contend with. Our very own Lewis Moses even got in the act commentating via the BBC red button on the elite event.

Some incredible performances from all of our runners on the day, starting with Paul Allan who absolutely smashed his Chicago PB by finishing 383rd in 2:36:55…absolutely outstanding! James Carberry followed up last years Manchester sub 2:40 with another impressive 2:41:15. Paul Gilsenan running his first marathon finished in an impressive 2:52:30, Lee Johnson ran an easy first half marathon with his friend from Ireland before cruising to a sub 3hour, while experienced marathon runners Louise and Barry Talman (running together) , Jeff Miller and Paul Cook (a mile or so together at 22-23miles) finished within 40 seconds of each other after following different race strategies and achieving a GFA/Championship time in the process.

Andrew Bainbridge and Ed Lamb both made their marathon debuts in impressive times, 3:05:44 and 3:12:46, Andrew also running a negative split on the day. Dave Tomlinson 3:22:58 on very little training while Jade Hutchinson, starting from a championship pen finished her first marathon in 3:31:43. Amanda Waller ran an excellent 3:49:44 securing a GFA (based on this years times) while Simon Daniels enjoyed his first London marathon, completing the course in 4:32:30 with Iain Girard crossing the line in 4:47:27.

Multi marathon runner Sarah Tomlinson completed her marathon in 4:50:36 only a short number of weeks after completing Tokyo in late February and Chicago back in October. Sam Stanley, also running her first marathon completed the course in an excellent 5:50:01. Massive achievements by everyone, marathons can be exceptionally tough with many obstacles that can derail your day including changes in weather condition, disrupted sleep or something completely left field which couldn’t be mitigated. Millions of pounds are raised at these types of events and our club have raised around £10,000 between the athletes who took part.

Full results can be found here. A few photos of the weekend, unfortunately James Carberry and Lee Johnson were camera shy but if you have photos of your run please let me know!

Following the London marathon the appropriately named The Nearly But Not Quite The London Marathon 2023 – North Saturn running running event took place. The rules around this event is competitors can choose any distance from 5km to as far as they want in 8 hours with an angel of the north medal for all those taking part. Congratulations to all our Harriers who took part on the day, event results can be found here (clubs not listed at these events)

The track and field action in the NEYDL over the weekend has been covered in a separate article that can be found here Some fantastic performances from our junior athletes which resulted in the combined team from Darlington and Allerton finishing 2nd on the day. Incredibly talented athletes coming through the ranks of the club. Big shout out to the club coaches, officials and parents who supported the event.

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