Herne Hill Harriers

28/02/09 - Women struggle in Surrey XC League finale

The women's cross country team was significantly below strength for the rearranged final fixture at Lloyd Park with only 2 runners from the team's regular scorers, Clare Pauzers and Helen Sharp being available. On the day, the team could finish only 7th but stronger earlier performances ensured the club finished 4th in the final league table.

Alex West impressed by winning the U13 girls' race and a consistent performance by the team on the day put them in second place, resulting in a commendable fourth place in the final league table and position matched by the U15 girls. The best league placing, however, was achieved by the U17 women who finished the season as runners-up. (James Ward)

Click here to view the full results (hyperlink to Surrey County AA website).

22/02/09 - Herne Hill’s supervet Allan Long wins British Masters indoor pentathlon title

Herne Hill Harriers' supervet Allan Long struck gold in the M65 category at the British Masters Indoor championships at Lee Valley. Despite stumbling in the first event, the  60m hurdles, Allan quickly recovered in the second event, the long jump, his strongest event, and he then took a 122 point lead into the shot put. After this Allan’s lead had been marginally reduced to 100 points by the only remaining significant challenger for the title, Roger Bruck of Barnet. And Bruck put the pressure on in the fourth event by turning his deficit into a 175 point lead as Allan struggled to deliver a significant clearance in the high jump. Undeterred, Allan returned to the indoor track for the final 1000m and won by a magnificent margin, despite this being an extreme distance for our M60 outdoor sprinter. Allan retook the lead from the perturbed Bruck when it really mattered and the Britsh Masters M65 indoor pentathlon title. Congratulations to Allan, our latest national veteran champion! (Waldy Pauzers)

Results:   60m hurdles - 14.21 (398 pts);  long jump - 4.14m (684 pts);  shot put - 7.53m (551 pts);  high jump - 1.00m; 1000m - 3:58.30 (679 pts)

21/02/09 - Solid team effort at National championships caps a good cross country season for men
 
The senior men's team completed our club cross country season at the biggest race of them all, the English National championships at Parliament Hill, with a performance that possibly summed up our season. Our 17th position was very creditable, but also frustratingly close to something rather bigger that could put us right on the distance running map beyond the Surrey boundaries.
 
As with a number of our races this winter we have put in really good team efforts but have often fallen just short of what we really strive for. Some very good second places have been dangerously close to being even better wins, and while we were never going to be winning on the National stage, our 17th could have been translated into top 10 with a little more luck. This time it was injury to Alan Barnes, who was ironically on the verge of completing his first full senior cross country season after previous injury ravaged years that robbed us of that possibility, but the 19 HHH men who were able to race all did the club proud.
 
Iain Lockett led the line again as our only first claim top 100 finisher in 86th, and was very well backed up by Ben Paviour in 114th, Keith Newton in 127th, David Robinson in 132nd and Jeff Cunningham in 178th. Closing our 6 man team in 369th position was a man more famous for his exploits in the HHH track team in years gone past, as Dave Peters used the strength derived from his bid to be fit for the demands of the London Marathon to very good effect in navigating a course which was muddy in places but basking in glorious sunshine, the latter maybe fooling Dave into thinking he was back on the track.
 
Our 6 man combination that placed 17th was followed in quite closely by 3 more men who, once added to the 6, gave us a position of 13th in the albeit secondary 9 man team competition. Tim Elsey struggled to 426th place while still recovering from a big road PB for 5K of 14:59 in Armagh a couple of days earlier (or maybe from his celebrations of said superb performance) and he was chased in by Simon Coombes in 452nd and Mike Cummings in 456th.
 
Although not quite making our scoring teams, Rajdave Singh raised some eyebrows with a fine 482nd place in his first experience of a race of this size (1,455 finished), while it was also good to see Iain Yates back racing with a measured effort in 536th. 8 more men completed the HHH charge, namely James Ward who finished 677th, Paul Shiel 699th, Elekwa Onwuchekwa 766th, Ed Barrow 864th, Tim Ridley 993rd, Jim Zaple 1,005th, Glen Keegan 1,353rd and Andy Lea-Gerrard 1,444th, while I should also report superb performances by second claim runners Benedict Whitby in 6th place, Chris Smith 21st and Orlando Edwards 23rd, all of course competing for their first claim clubs. 

HHH closed teams in 4 other races: the U15 boys finished 21st, the senior women placed 25th, our U15 girls were 25th and U13 girls 29th. The day also witnessed fabulous individual performances by Katie Snowden who placed a marvellous10th in the U15 girls' race and Lewis Lloyd who was 12th in the U15 boys race. Well done to these two quality young athletes and to all other club members who tackled a very muddy Parliament Hill - just the way we like it. (Geoff Jerwood)

Click here to view the full results (hyperlink to English Cross Country Association website).

Click here to read Daniel Wilmott's report of the young athletes' races.

14/02/09 - Julien Allwood claims maiden national indoor title

Julien Allwood won his first indoor title by triumphing in the U17 men’s triple jump at the National Indoor championships in Birmingham on 13 February. The 2008 English School champion produced an impressive second round triple jump of 14.12m leaving him head and shoulders above the rest in the U17 category.

Rising star Katie Snowdon had a busy but successful weekend, winning a silver medal in the U17 women's 300m. Katie recorded 40.40 on the clock, chasing Victoria Ohurugu, younger sister to the Olympic gold medallist, Christine, all the way to the line. But the running didn’t stop there for Katie, who was able to compete in the 800m the following day, claiming bronze by finishing in third place in 2:17.42.

Unfortunately, four other HHH athletes narrowly missed out on medals by finishing in fourth place in a series of events: Funto Fabunmi-Alade in U17 women’s 200m, Patrick Jones in U15 boys' shot, Taj Johnson in U15 boys' 60m and Jonathan Clarke in U17 men’s long jump.

At the senior championships in Sheffield, Jade Johnson placed a disappointing third in the long jump with 6.36m, losing by 8cm, but claimed a national medal nonetheless. (Sarwar Khan)

07/02/09 - Champions again! Men win Surrey League title in style

The senior men's cross country team completed a successful defence of the Surrey League title to win for the 4th season in a row. After a very tight first 2 races of 4 which saw us trail Thames Hare & Hounds by 7 points at the halfway stage, we then kicked into top gear big style with very strong teams in our remaining fixtures in the New Year. A fabulous team effort in the 3rd race at Coulsdon gave us a seemingly unassailable lead of 105 points going into the final race at Ham and any fears that we might embarrass ourselves by losing any or all of that lead were allayed by a truly awesome display over a flat and fast course down by the river.
 
Thames were by their own admission weak in the 3rd race but to their credit fielded a strong team in the final race at Ham when they may have given up the ghost for this league season at least. That HHH were able to beat such opposition by a margin of 91 points on the day is an illustration of just how good a team performance this was. It was phenomenal that we could finish with an overall league win by 196 points over the season when things had been so close for 2 races and our overall score for the season of 565 points is one of the lowest, if not the lowest on record since Division 1 reverted to 9 teams rather than 8.
 
Benedict Whitby showed how close he is to returning to his international class form of a few years ago when placing 2nd in the South of England championships 2 weeks earlier and his win in this league race underlined his quality as his most immediate pursuers - both guests wearing the vests of Paula Radcliffe's Bedford & County club - had finished 3rd and 6th respectively in that Southern championship race. A HHH man was next home after the 2 guests, thereby giving us a 1-2 in the league scoring race as Orlando Edwards, in a vey welcome return to HHH competition, had a fine run to see off further quality runners in the top 10.
 
That top 10, indeed the top 7 if the guests are discounted, included 3 more men in red and black to give us a wonderful start to our team scores. Ben Paviour in 5th place goes from strength to strength as increased mileage for marathon preparation is doing much the same for his running at it is for race winner Mr Whitby. Ben seems to improve with every race and any frustration he may have had that his planned half marathon was cancelled was taken out on the opposition at Ham. Iain Lockett has been our leading man more often than not over recent years, as illustrated by the fact that he won the award for the best veteran over the 4 races with a perfect score of first vet in every race. However, he is certainly unaccustomed to being our 4th team counter as he followed Ben in very closely in 6th, while Alan Barnes was similarly close behind Iain in 7th for some great team packing at the front of the field.
 
Tim Elsey showed that his form is back by finishing 14th the day before his 26th birthday and he was well backed up by even more good packing as veterans David Taylor in 15th, David Robinson in 18th and Keith Newton in 19th ensured we had a superb tally of 9 men in the league top 20. A great battle at the finish between Jeff Cunningham who placed 27th and Alan Wray a place behind in 28th ensured we didn't wait long to close the 10 man team and had 11 in the top 20.
 
As the runners came streaming in there were yet more HHH vests on display as we had no less than 33 men in the race, and we indeed had more than 30 finishers in all 4 league races this season, the first time we have achieved this for many a year. Everyone plays a vital part regardless of whether they are quick enough to score team points. Well done to all who ran in this race and in any of the previous 3 league races for being part of the HHH experience. (Geoff Jerwood)

Click here to view the full race results (hyperlink to Stragglers website).

07/02/09 - Herne Hill put to flight in Flyder Cup

Despite a valiant effort, the HHH darts team did not quite emerge from Belgrave Hall with an overall victory, as Thames exerted a very small measure of revenge for their cross country defeat by beating us by a narrow margin in the head to head contest 4-2 and overall that won 8 legs to our 7. On a positive note we both comfortably beat our hosts Belgrave Harriers 5-1. Thanks must go to Belgrave Harriers for organising a very enjoyable evening. Click here for a more detailed account of proceedings.