North London Half, Middlesex indoor champs, Essex 20, Civil Service relays

The Vitality North London Half Marathon

A horde of Heathsiders ran the shiny new North London Half: a whistle-stop tour of Barnet, Wembley and various places in between. There were some eye-catching PBs and good individual performances: first Heathsider home was Allan Whatmough, who knocked 16 minutes out of his time last year at Reading to finish inside 80 minutes. Paul Jarman scooped first place V50 with a time of 82 minutes.

On the ladies' side, Rachel Newstead impressed with a time of 86 minutes, which was good enough for fourth senior lady. Celine also scorched through in under 90 minutes, despite arriving late to the start. A special well done though to Jo Irwin whose 1:41 earned her second place V45.

In case anyone really needs to have the twin delights of Barnet and Wembley described to them, ace reporter Gabi Johnson has provided the following:

"I thought the course was good - obviously grey and dreary weather didn't help make places like Collingwood and Wembley look anything like what could be called scenic but an undulating out and back route with the distraction of being able to see the elites returning at mile 7 and entering Wembley stadium for a bit of novelty was quite good."

Will it be one for next year's Rob Jackson road race champs? It's got some stiff competition from the Luton Marathon and the Crouch End Ultra*.

*(Not an actual race.)

Middlesex Indoor Athletics Championships

We had a small but successful group of athletes tanking it round in the warm at the weekend - notable results include the U15 boys long jump where our Caspar, Isaac and Gabriel claimed all three medals (see photo above). Gabriel also came first in the high jump. Our roving reporter Ruth nominates Zac for a vote of thanks for encouraging the younger athletes to turn out.

For the seniors, Adam Kirk-Smith won a hotly-contested 1500m and took down Ed Garrett's one-week old club record for the indoor distance to boot. Izaiah picked up first place in the shot put, Pierre was a narrow second in the pole vault and Jeff ran a scorching time in the 200m.

We didn't, alas, manage to get any participants out for the 1000m walk although neither did anyone else to be fair, with
the honourable exception of Enfield and Haringey, who provided both contestants for what looks like it had all the hallmarks of a classic final.

Road relays at Finsbury Park

Just in case this report was in danger of losing the common touch, Tony K reports on the annual Civil Service road relays:

"The annual Civil Service road relays took place in Finsbury Park on Wednesday 11th March with three Heathsiders involved. Teams consisted of four runners with each leg being two laps of the carriageway.

"Two of us managed to take advantage of running on home turf with Pete Crockford winning a silver medal with the DEFRA
team, one better than Tony Killilea’s Ordnance Survey team who took bronze.

"Tim Marshall’s HASSRA team may have missed out on a medal but they took the award for being the most sociable team, as
they proved in The Faltering Fullback, then the Betjeman Arms, then the Euston Flyer, before most of them had to catch
trains back to various northern outposts."

Other races

• Emilia ran a PB at the Barcelona Marathon, despite unspecified problems during the last 10-12K. "It’s a nice marathon – well-organised, great support and scenic, but a bit warm at times," says Emilia who surely can't be expecting sympathy from anyone who was running in the UK last weekend.

• Emerson continues his tour of all the region's most glamorous races: the Essex 20 is apparently another 3-lap event, this time around lanes, and despite being twice the distance, was far more enjoyable than the Sidcup 10 the previous week.

• Finely-tuned machine Mark Anderson was screaming round the Silverstone Half Marathon, which was, as usual, pretty windy. He also mentioned his difficulty overtaking wheelchair racers on the hill sections only for them to go zipping past him on the downhills, in possibly the least successful attempt to elicit sympathy since Emilia. Mark's alleged brother who none of us has ever met ran a big PB.

• John Driscoll was also on a race track at the Oulton Park Duathlon. "Venue is a proper race track circuit with chicanes, pit lanes and a fast flat home straight. Good news is there's no traffic and the cyclists don't need to brake between T1 and the dismount 38.5 km and 9 laps later.Bad news was I knew I was going to be creamed by the TT bikes and they didn't disappoint, so despite cycling as hard as I ever had done, I came in 92nd on the bike leg out of the first 100 finishers." Happily, John made up for it a bit with his running and came 10th in his age group - full result below.

• And finally, it's not a race, it's a run. But if you want to see who beat who, here's this week's parkrun results.

Results

Vitality North London Half Marathon, 15/03/2015

35 Allan Whatmough 01:19:50
57 Paul Jarman 01:22:58 (1ST MV50)
74 James Connell 01:24:28
94 Rachel Newstead 01:26:15
135 Celine Murray 01:28:20
200 Conor O'Shea 01:30:15
338 Henry Hamilton 01:34:16
717 Caroline Boyle 1:40:44
727 Jo Irwin 01:40:54 (2ND F45)
1170 Rebecca Sweet 01:45:49
1182 Brett Paterson 01:45:55
1365 Dominic Evans 01:48:18
1840 Daniel Johns 01:52:50
1875 Laura Boothman 01:53:12
1975 Eleanor Jones 01:54:09
2214 Shelly Fennell 01:56:31
2456 Gabrielle Johnson 01:58:43
2841 Hannah Forshaw 02:02:45
3198 Jill Gundry 02:07:56
3282 Frances Powrie 02:09:08
3294 Lyn Evans 02:09:15
3566 Ruth Aitken 02:13:21
3642 Jess Fogarty 02:14:35

Civil Service Relays, Finsbury Park, 11/03/2015

Pete Crockford (V55) 17:19 (third leg for DEFRA, who came second)

Tony Killilea (V50) 16:08 (first leg for Ordnance Survey, who came third)
Tim Marshall 17.05 (second leg for HASSRA, who came nowhere)

Barcelona Marathon
TBC Emilia Vynnycky 3:37:23 PB

Middlesex County Indoor Athletics Championships, 14 & 15/03/2015

SM 200m (a)
Final
4 Jeff Rice 24.30

SM 400m (b)
Final
4 Richard Macaulay 56.11

SM 800m (a)
Heat 1
2 Richard Macaulay 2:08.04

Final
5 Richard Macaulay 2:10.91

SM 1500m (b)
Final
1 Adam Kirk-Smith 4:05.39

SM Pole Vault (b)
Final
2 Pierre Bourguignon-Pitet 4.20

SM Shot (a)
Final
1 Izaiah Turner 10.55

U17M High Jump (b)
Final
5 Antanas Weston 1.55
6 Amar Ayiarmajeed 1.50

U15B High Jump (b)
Final
1 Gabriel Bazzarelli 1.40

U15B Long Jump (a)
Final
1 Caspar Schluze 4.28
2 Isaac Tibbett 4.15
3 Gabriel Bazzarelli 4.03

English Schools XC Championships, Blackburn, 14/03/2015

U15M (3.6km)
210 Liam Garrett 13:29

U20W (4.3km)
63 Rachel Seckl 17:40 

Silverstone Half Marathon22 Mark Anderson 1:18:4069 Jason Anderson 1:22:50

Essex 20
93 Emerson Paul 2:28:01

Oulton Park Duathlon, Cheshire
John Driscoll
Run1 (8.6km) 31.28 Bike (38.5km) 1:07.24 Run 2 (4.3km) 15.59 Overall 1:58:04Age Group 10/41 Overall 68/280