May 2023

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by Alex Hird Wednesday evening saw the 2nd North East Grand Prix fixture of the season at a sunny Monkton Stadium. I was in the 800m, along with young Matty Richardson from the junior section who was making his competitive track and field debut. My heat came first, and I ran a season's best of 2:06.16 Still some work to do for me to get below 2 minutes. Matty lined up a few heats later, arriving right after his school cricket match. This was his

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by Joanne Hope After being MIA from the club for a few years, I was running sporadically at best. I’d put a lot of weight back on, I was massively unfit, miserable and I missed the club. I needed something to motivate me and get me back on track (literally). I’d always wanted to attempt the ‘iconic’ distance and knew I would have to take the training seriously so decided to sign up. I’ve always enjoyed rural, countryside runs so decided that Winderemere

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by Simon Pickering It seems kind of fitting that my first race report is for my first marathon, but here goes…. I had originally planned to do the Yorkshire Marathon as my first one, due to it starting in my birthplace of York, but a lack of organisation meant I’d forgotten I’d be sat on a plane on that day. Being the tight Yorkshireman that I am, I didn’t want to lose my money, and after a phone call with Run for

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by Geoff Hewitson The opening NEMAA Track & Field League meeting of the 2023 season took place last Monday evening in near perfect weather conditions for the time of year. Despite a couple of late withdrawals, the mens team still had a healthy 10 competitors, including NEMAA debutant Danny Oakley, and the welcome return of Percy Parkin after an absence of a couple of years from NEMAA competition. The ladies squad was much thinner on the ground with only 4 competitors

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by Mel Riley After the cancellation of the Run Nation event at Ouston Airfield, I decided to find another race to re-route to. With nothing much around the local area, it was a midweek trip to Alnwick for the Alnwick Harriers annual 10k race at Hulne Park. I didn’t fully appreciate just how far away Alnwick is from Darlington (and even further when you have to battle through rush hour traffic!) so in typical Mel style I arrived with 15 minutes to

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by Mel Riley The day after the Neptune Relays, Darlington Harriers hosted the first event of their mile series at South Park. The route is basically one lap of the parkrun, finishing at the top of the little (killer!!) hill beside the bowling green. When entering we were asked what our mile time would be so we could be set off in waves with people of similar ability rather than in one group. It had been raining most of the day

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by Brad Wight While most of the club were tackling the Blackhill Relays, I was working away in Lancashire. Again, the Runbritain race listings gave me options, nothing on my doorstep but I decided the 30 min drive to Kirkby Stephen for a 10K road race made more sense than 5Ks in Workington or Stockport. The race was hosted by Howgill Harriers and was a friendly event with approximately 40 runners and a junior race was held beforehand. Another local club, Eden

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by Brad Wight I had a midweek work meeting to attend in Congleton in Cheshire last Thursday so had a look on the Runbritain site to see if there were any races in that neck of the woods. Top of the list and only a three mile drive from my hotel was: “The Killer Mile – 25% gradient road race”. Well that sounds interesting! It’s a very popular race which has been held annually since 1982 and was originally intended to be the opposite

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by Geoff Hewitson Over 50 teams took part in this popular mixed team format relay on the site of the former Consett Steelworks. The course is a challenging loop of approximately 2.1 miles with the notorious hill coming near the end. Our Club has enjoyed a great deal of success in this event, having either won it or finished in the top 3 on several occasions. In 2022 we finished runners-up and were the overall winners the previous time it was

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by Alex Hird Over the weekend, the 2023 North East Counties Track & Field Championships were held at Middlesbrough Sports Village. The highlight of the weekend was having team GB athlete Richard Kilty (aka the Teesside Tornado) in attendance. He broke the North East 100m record on the Saturday, and returned on Sunday to take gold again in the 200m. I entered the 800m on the Sunday, and due to only 9 entering, I made the final automatically! It was an extremely strong field,