Essex YA Road Relays

A bronze medal and a fastest lap award was the modest return for our young athlete teams at the weekend’s poorly supported Essex Road Relays at the Garrison in Colchester.  With middle distance eyes turned to cross country, the event (normally held in April) was an unwanted addition to the calendar. However, it gave some of our runners a chance to shine and impress the selectors with inter-county opportunities on the horizon – and this they duly did.

The fastest lap time of the day was set by Liam Blaikie running the first leg in the U17M relay; he recorded 7m 47s to arrive back at the changeover in the lead and 4 seconds up on Havering’s Jamie Buckley-Stantor – a decent scalp for Liam. We had dropped back to second place but only by a couple of seconds after a solid second leg by Dan Yaxley (8m 21s) who then handed over to 400m man Tom Larkin who bravely agreed to step in after all the usual suspects for the third slot declared themselves unfit or unavailable. Tom conceded a couple of places on his way round the course for a respectable 8m 38 and well clear of 5th place Chelmsford who came in 13 seconds down on our total of 24m 26s.

The bronze team medal came in the U17W race where Claudia Conway (9m 43s), Kate Stockings (10m 48s) and Suna Yokes (10m 47s) combined to follow Basildon and Colchester/Tendering home; Claudia’s time was the second fastest in the race and running the first leg, it put Woodford in the lead.  Faster second leg runners pegged back our girls and it was left to Suna Yokes to bring the team home and claim the medal.

Good runs were also put in by our U15 teams who both finished out of the medals in 4th and 5th places.  The U15 Girls team of lead out by Ellie Foster (10m 8s) who again ran a quicker time than her older team mates and came home in 5th place. Amy Doyle (10m 12) maintained the 6th place she was given at handover; Georgina Ferrari pulled one place back with her last leg 10m 14s. The U15 Boys team managed a highly creditable 4th place given the difficulty in putting the team together. James Stockings led off with 8m 22s for 2nd place and 2 seconds down on Southend; James' time was the 3rd quickest in the race. Ryan Dunne managed 8m 50s to pull the team into first but it was a big ask for Tom Kenny, running in his first race for the club to hold on to that when Southend, Havering and Colchester were saving their fastest runners for the last leg. Those teams then recorded the first, second and fifth fastest leg times and Tom (9m 27s) was gradually reeled in and had to settle for 4th place at the finish.

With priority being given to making up teams for the Tom Pink Memorial Relays at Picketts Lock on the Saturday, we elected not to send teams to Colchester for the U13 age group. Amelia Barrett, who had a fine 3rd place in the Ruislip Met League, did however run the first U13G leg and recorded a fine 10m 15s which was good enough for 4th place and would not have looked out of place in the U15G or U17W races. 

Lastly, thanks are due to George Ferrari and Paul Stockings who managed the teams on the day.