North East Grand Prix 6 – 16th August 2023
by Alex Hird
Last Wednesday was the 6th and final NEGP fixture of the season at Monkton Stadium. Its been an incredibly popular series this year, with most events for each fixture selling out within an hour of entries opening. Despite this, I’ve managed to do all six.
I was entered in the 800m for the final fixture. When the heats were announced 48 hours before, I was shocked, and a little bit worried, to find myself in the ‘A race’ with the top local lads.
When the day came, I just saw it as an opportunity to be dragged around by the best the North East has to offer over 800m, and running the in B race wouldn’t bring the best out of me.
Of the seven on the start line, six of them have ran sub 2 minutes this year (two of them had even ran sub 1:50), and then there was me stuck in the outside lane who’d only just snuck under 2:05 recently. In 800m terms, 5 seconds between my PB and the 2nd slowest PB is huge, so I absolutely had my work cut out to try and not embarrass myself.
It’s weird being in the outside lane, but I shot off around the bend, and at the break point I tucked in behind the pack on the inside, with my goal being just to hang on for as long as possible. I clocked 59s for the first 400m, and stuck with the pack until around the 600m mark, where they pulled away slightly. I dug in, and gave it everything, and I crossed the line in seventh (last) place, but in a time of 2:01.94
This was a PB by 2.56s, again this doesn’t sound like much, but over 800m is quite a large improvement. There’s no way I would’ve ran that time in the B race, even if I finished first in it.
It’s another step closer to my goal of a sub 2 minute 800m. Unfortunately, for a couple reasons, I had a slow start to the track season this year. Maybe I could’ve been a bit closer, who knows. There’s always next year.
A good end to the 2023 NEGP
Now, to look forward to the NECAA Open event at Shildon this Sunday, where it looks like I won’t be on my own, in fact it looks like a cracking turnout from us.
Alex
