Woodford athletes took part in a handful of test events held over the weekend, which were primarily held to test protocols to allow a safe return to competition in the current Covid environment.
Three of Woodford’s throws athletes took part in a competition held at Copthall (Allianz) stadium on Saturday. Events were held in two pools of six for each of the four throws events. Woodford had two athletes in the women’s hammer event where the pools were mixed with Lucy Marshall being the best placed female athlete with a distance of 57.02m. Also competing was Simbiyat Sikiru, now a first year U/20 Simbiyat threw a personal best with the 4kg implement of 45.61m. In the men’s shot Hugh Williams recorded a distance of 12.15m.
On the track at Nuneaton on Sunday, hurdles specialist Cameron Fillery recorded a personal best over 100m with a time of 10.86 secs (+1.4), whilst in a slightly windy (+2.1) separate heat Ellis Gretrex recorded 11.06 secs w and Ollie Cresswell 11.41 secs w. Ellis also ran in his specialist event 400m where he recorded a decent 47.46 secs. Competing in the hammer, Lucy Marshall improved on her mark from the previous day at Copthall with 58.21m whilst at Hull on Saturday Craig Charlton won the Shot with a personal best mark of 16.70m, a significant improvement on his prior best of 15.63m for the former bob-sledder. This ranks him 3rd in this year's (Covid affected) UK ranking lists.
There was also news from Germany where athletics competition seems to have returned in more normal conditions with Jordan Donnelly opening his season with decent marks over both 800m (1m54.3 secs) and 3000m (8m40.3 secs) in separate meetings in Regensburg