Congratulations from everyone at the Club George and so many sincere thanks for all that you have contributed not only at the Club but to athletics in general.
Ben Fish continues on a great run of form winning the Lymm 10k (542 Runners) in Cheshire last weekend in a time of 32:21 and beating in Tarus Elly (2nd) from Salford by 15secs. Ben is aiming for the Berlin Marathon and targeting the Commonwealth Games Marathon qualifying time and he is on course with his current training regime and racing consistency.
Ben Fish
Full Results HERE:
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You can’t keep those Triathletes down – Matt Nuttall recovering from a very bad shoulder injury and Mark Bleasdale who is training really hard on the Track every week, hopped over to Clitheroe last weekend – April 14th – and competed in the Triathlon there. Mark had a really good day finishing in 11th place (1:34.38) whilst Matt finished in 20th place (1:39.26).
Full Results HERE:
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Three Harriers got involved in the latest of the 5k Park Runs at Preston which featured 148 runners on Saturday April 13th. First home was Tom Blaney 4th in the Race (18:09) and second in the 20 – 24 Sen Age Male Group – Tom’s PB for this Race was achieved the week before with 17:45; next came Joe Monk in 5th place overall (19:01) and first Junior Male in the 15 – 19 Age Group – Joe also ran his PB at this Race the week before coming in 6th overall in a fine time of 17:55; And following these two athletes in was Grace Handley 12th overall (19:54) and winner of the Junior Female Age Group category as well as being is first female runner home in all age groups – so a fine performance there.
Joe Monk has been hitting the Races of late sandwiching in between two Park 5k runs the Inter – Club Race which took place on 10th April at Blackpool. Overall 235 runners lined up for this and Joe finished an excellent 29th (23:08).
Full Results HERE:
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Not to be outdone and left out of the results, Rhiannon Wickham turned up at the Cerebral Palsy Catforth 7 on April 14th finishing 25th overall (51:20) and fourth female runner home.
Full Results HERE:
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The same weekend Ben Aspinall and Jack Vickery competed at the Wigan Open T & F Meeting. Both had really good performances. Ben came 2nd in the U17 Long Jump with an excellent new PB of 5:15m and then came equal 1st in the U17 High Jump with 1:60m, just 1 cm off his PB. Jack Vickery won the U20M 6k Shot Putt with a seasons best throw of 48:50, just 35 cms off his his PB of 48.85. Over at the Liverpool Open Meeting on the same day, Paul Coffey ran in the Senior Men’s 100m and finished a very good 5th in a time of 12.2sec – a seasons best and just a tenth of a second off his personal best.
Full Results Wigan HERE:
Full Results Liverpool HERE:
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National 12 Stage Road Relays
Blackburn Harriers travelled down to Sutton Park for the 12 stage for the first time since 2007 when they came 24th. The day started brightly as new member Shaun Livesey brought out a calor stove and put the kettle on. – talk about being prepared!!
At the cancelled – due to the snow – Northern 12 and 6 Stage Relays scheduled for Blackpool a few weeks previously, the Harriers had a minimum of two Men’s 12 Stage Teams and two 6 Stage Women’s Teams which were ready to compete. This would have been our best performance for a number of years in terms of the number of athletes and Teams competing. Sadly, a number of these athletes were unavailable for the Nationals which deleted our numbers.
Although we finished with an uncompleted Team of 11 Runners in the Men’s 12 Stage, due to a late withdrawal on Friday, the team had a great day and fully enjoyed the experience and will be back again next year.
Finishing times for the Club were:
Karl Billington (30) 27:43 Mark Bleasdale (44) 17:03 Andrew Buttery (41) 29:32 Zachary Howe (43) 16:41 Shaun Livesey (48) 30:56 Jack Lonsdale (48) 17:33 John Chaplin (54) 32:52 Richard Taylor (59) 20:02 C Davies (59) 32:28 John Cookson (66) 20:33 Chris Barnes (63) 30:58
Full Results HERE:
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And to end the weekend, what better way than to celebrate the 90th Birthday of the Club’s President George Kirby. George, known as Mr Blackburn Harriers has contributed so much to the Club over the last 60yrs that it was an honour to be able to raise a glass to him. Tony Wood, the Club Chairman moved a toast to George and then Ken Adcroft, former Club Secretary and Chris Fay, another stalwart of the Club and former International Runner, paid tributes to George with Chris saying that he hoped that we would all be back in 10yrs for his Centenary celebration. And so say all of us!!
