North East Grand Prix fixture 3 – 14th June 2023

by Alex Hird

It was a cracking summers day on Wednesday, with temperatures in the mid 20’s. It was not however a great evening for athletics, as it was just too warm!

Anyway, enough of me twisting, I’d entered two races for this fixture. First up was the mile. When I looked at the start list for this race, I was abit anxious as I had the slowest PB from all 16 runners, but I saw this as a chance to get dragged along by some quicker athletes. I set off in my usual fashion, hitting front and staying there for the first lap which I did in 67s. I slowed a little and others past as we hit the halfway point in 2:19(72s lap). As you all know from the monthly mile, lap 3 is the killer, and this one certainly hurt in the heat but I managed to hold it together to clock 3:32(73s lap) heading into the final final lap. My previous “official” PB was 4:52 so I knew this was in my sights, and I gave it everything down the home straight crossing the line in 8^th/16. I looked at my watch and saw 4:39, which I just couldn’t believe. 13s PB in that heat.

As I was walking off the track, I remembered about the club mile record held by Kevin Archer from August 1996 which is 4:38.9. I eagerly waited for my official time which eventually came through as 4:39.63, so I’d missed out on the record by 0.73s. It was a weird feeling, amazed at the PB, but also gutted about just missing on the club record. Next time

 

I then had around 90 minutes wait for my 2^nd race, which was a 400 meters race. When the gun went I started this race very cautiously as my legs were stiff, so I didn’t get off to the best of starts. This probably cost me my 2^nd PB of the night, as I clocked 57.24s, only 0.4s off my PB. Again, next time