Herne Hill Harriers round-up: U23 duo produce PBs in overseas events

Phoebe Anderson and Yasmin Marghini – both U23 – produced new 3,000m PBs as they joined British Students champion Saskia Millard in the top 20 British women ranked in 2022.

Marghini’s 3,000m best came the day after her 5,000m track debut (16:38.87), writes Geoff Jerwood.

Anderson followed up her PB 3,000m earlier this month with another sizeable improvement of more than six seconds as she clocked 9:17.12 to place third in the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships in New York on Saturday.

This time elevates her to tenth in the UK, leapfrogging club-mate Millard.

Marghini improved her recent 3,000m best time by more than five seconds (9:30.76), finishing seventh in the Mountain West Championships in Albuquerque, New Mexico to rank 20th in the country. Both her runs were at almost 5,000 feet altitude at the same championship meeting.

Marghini’s 5000m time puts her ninth is what is a very early year 5000m ranking list.

Sprinter Michael Miller was Harriers’ sole representative at the British Athletics Indoor Championship in Birmingham. His fourth place in the men’s 60m heats (6.94) was not quite enough to qualify him for the semi-finals.

Herne Hill’s highest-placed individual at the English National Cross Country Championship was U20 woman Poppy Craig-McFeely (15th).

Next highest finisher was Phoebe Bowen, 46th in the U17 women’s 5km race.

Harriers best team position was ninth in the U15 girls’ 4km race – Orla Carroll (58th), India Blakey (79th), Vivi Marshall (80th) and Eva O’Hanlon (92nd) combined.

Grace O’Hanlon placed 97th, only four seconds behind her sister. The U13 girls came 11th in their 3km race – the scoring quartet being Sophie Jack (70th), Lily Kitto (99th), Florence Mills (100th) and Summer MacKay (175th).

The U13 boys finished 14th in their 3km race thanks to Caspian Holmes (62nd), Jack McLennan (82nd), Matthieu Ladure (109th) and Alfie Bryan (120th). The U15 boys were 19th over 4km, courtesy of Oak Buchan (58th), Keeran Sriskandarajah (79th), Alexander Wilson (132nd) and Fabien Whitelock (243rd). The U17 men were 23rd through David Aisa Miller (217th), Alex Jack (238th), Harry Bell (247th) and Evan Cowell-New (266th).

The women placed 20th of 104 complete teams, led home by Natasha Lodge (108th) and followed in by a trio of U23 women – Katie Balme (113th), Grace Leyland (132nd) and her fellow St George’s student Jennifer Nandi (287th).

The men had 31 finishers and placed 23rd of 133 complete teams.

Andrew Warburton was first to cross the line (200th), followed by Brandon Dewar (239th), Ben Paviour (300th), Jack Hillier (315th), Jeff Cunningham (317th) and Eion Brady (352nd).

Raj Paranandi and John Kettle (both M45) ran 73:25 and 74:16 respectively in Sunday’s Wokingham Half Marathon, with Paranandi’s time a PB by around a minute.