Watford BMC Grand Prix

In generally benign weather conditions at Watford on Saturday, there were some high standard middle distance performances from WGwEL athletes, led by personal bests for Ronnie Sparke, Oli Heeks and Kevin Kane.

In the first event of the evening, one of 4 or 5 early races that were run in quite windy conditions before the wind subsided for the rest of the evening, Kevin Kane won a competitive "C" 1500m and marginally improved his three year old personal best to 3m46.4 secs. Making more significant in-roads into their personal best was junior Ronnie Sparke who, in the "D" race, ran strongly having taken on the pace after the pacemaker dropped out. Ronnie held form well for all but the last 60-70m and was rewarded with a 4 seconds improvement in his personal best as he finished 2nd and clocked 3m46.6 secs, just 0.2 secs outside Chris Reynolds' WGwEL U/20 Club record. Behind Ronnie in that "D" race was last year's English Schools senior champion, Alex Cornwell, who also went with the fast pace but just struggled over the last 150m and clocked 3m 50.6 secs, a little over 1 second outside his recent personal best. Both Ronnie and Alex are coached at Woodford by Richard Thurston. Another Richard Thurston athlete, Gavin Lewis, recorded 1m55.8 secs in the 800m "G" race, and it was Gavin who later acted as pacemaker for the "E" 800m race which saw Oli Heeks, coached by Colin Loughland, break 1m50secs for the first time, winning in 1m49.35 secs. Kiwi Para-Olympian, the partially sighted Tim Prendergast, recorded his fastest 5000m for several years with 14m56.11secs.

In the women's races, reigning national U/23 champion Tara Bird competed in her first 800m of the season as she returns from injury. Although only placing 5th in a messy "B" race, and running 10m further than she needed to, she finished strongly, recording 2m06.00 secs, and will have been given encouragement for a return to her best as the season progresses. In the "D" race, where the athletes were led to expect pace-making in the 64/65 secs area, they had to deal with some appalling pace judgement as they were taken through in a little outside 61 secs. Kathrine Foy was unfortunately affected by this, and dropped out at around 450m.