Indoor Round Up Weekend 25th / 26th February
This weekend the Student Athletes had their fling in the British Universities Championships at Sheffield and the Masters Athletes competed at their annual Inter-Area match at Lee Valley.
Everyone competing at Sheffield seemed to give their best with performances better than or close to their PBs which is all that they could ask of their-selves. Clearly pride of place must go to Khia’aama Kofi now studying at Brunel University. Khia’aama has since an early age been one of our emerging sprinters but this weekend, she turned her hand to 400m. Her heat on Saturday saw her achieve a really great 58.17s clocking so she went into her semi-final on Sunday with real hopes of improvement. She did achieve her aim and came away with a fine PB of 58.15 secs which matches Indoor the times of our great Olympian Margaret Critchley and International Caroline Swinbank, so this augers really well for Khia’aama’s future at this event. Furthermore, Khia had competed in the 60m on the Friday where she twice ran 7.87 secs (about one tenth off her PB set last year) so she really had one satisfactory weekend.
In the 200m U20 Isaac Marsh threw down the gauntlet to our more established sprinters with an outstanding 21.80 secs semi-final run. Isaac had opened with an easy 22.17 qualifying run in his heat. Yusef Hussien moved his Indoor PB down to 23.82 secs in his heat.
U23 Josh Maggs was with the all-conquering Bath University squad and showed a real speed improvement cutting his 60m PB down to 7.05 secs from the 7.11 secs that he set last year as an U20. Josh backed that fine run with a 7.06 sec clocking as well.
Ability athlete Simran Kaur always performs well on the big stage and ran 9.89 sec for 60m on Friday following her impressive, televised run at Birmingham the week before.
Luke Burgess U23 ran Indoors for the second time and ran a respectable 800m in 2:01.01. Danni Sinclair U23W is now under the watchful eye of ex B&W star athlete Steve Mitchell at Cardiff Met University and again inched her season’s best down to 2:24.34.
Our most high-profile athlete Ester Leong had another solid Pole Vault performance clearing 3.83m to take fifth place in her final. This was Ester’s second-best performance of the year behind that super 3.91 clearance at Manchester a couple of weeks ago.
Sadly, missing from the results is our star hurdler Holly-Mae McKenna who whilst being surely good for a place in the final wacked a hurdle during warm up and needed to withdraw through injury. Sad but it happens Holly.
In the ‘Masters’ Inter-Area match at Lee Valley we had two performers who between them covered 7 events. W65 World Champion Caroline Powell is in her final year at this age group and is still going strong. She competed in the 60m, 200m and 400m setting times of 9.73 secs, 31.93 secs and 73.76 secs respectively to score good points for the South West Masters area. M45 Tim White excelled at four events as he moved up one age group 800m, 1500m, 3000m and Shot. Quite a mix. Tim’s marks were 2:37.97, 5:21.97, 11:30.61 and 7.33m. Good points again for Tim who equally fills all of these gaps when required for Club matches (including Steeplechase and hurdles Outdoor). Tim is a fine asset to our Club and never shies away from any event if asked.
Mike Strange
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