Herne Hill Harriers round-up: Holmes wins gold in Mini London Marathon
The London Marathon was back in its full glory over the weekend, with the big race over 26.2 miles attracting more than 40,000 competitors on Sunday, writes Geoff Jerwood.
The Mini London Marathon was expanded this year to cater for larger entries of young athletes and moved to the day before the main event on the Saturday.
The junior races were 2.6 miles and there was a good representation from club members racing for their London Borough teams in the Borough Challenge, which was incorporated into the British Athletics Road Championship for the best youngsters in the country.
The young star of the weekend was Caspian Holmes in the U13 boys race on Saturday. He won the gold medal in his age group representing Southwark in the Borough Challenge and claimed a superb podium position in the British Championship with his time of 8:29. Holmes was 21 seconds ahead of the next finisher in the Borough race and a similar distance behind the national race winner from Yorkshire & Humberside.
Other Harriers who were very prominent in the Borough Challenge were Florence Mills (Southwark), fourth in the U13 girls race (9:39), Orla Wright (Wandsworth) fifth in the U15 girls (9:15) and Edward Cunniffe (Wandsworth) sixth in the U13 boys behind Holmes.
Also in the top dozen in the London Borough’s U15 girls race were Sophie Jack (Lambeth 9:22), Orla Carroll (Lambeth 9:23) and India Blakey (Wandsworth 9:26). The U17 boys race saw Keeran Sriskandarajah (Lambeth) finish 11th (7:58), Harry Bell (Wandsworth) 13th (8:02), Alex Jack (Lambeth) 18th (8:15) and Robin Bebbington (Lambeth) 20th (8:15).
First of the senior Herne Hill athletes was Irishman Marc Geraghty in 154th (2:34.48), just two places and one second ahead of Carl Delaney in 2:34.49. Next in was M40 Jeff Cunningham, 320th overall (2:39.57), followed closely by Ryan Willmott 328th in a PB (2:40.11). Ross Brown was 516th in 2:44.40, then came M55 Jonathan Ratcliffe who ran yet another sub 2:50 with his 2:49.50 which placed him tenth in his age group.
Eric Dol was next (2:51.07), followed byof M45 Ben Millar (2:51.20), Tom Irish (2:59.55), Jack Coy (3:06.12), M50 Trevor Chilton (3:08.18) and Pedro Henrique Pinto (3:13.58).
First Herne Hill female on the day was Rose Botfield (3:34.25), followed by Rosie Crampin (3:39.51). Other Harriers finishers included Jonathan Boyle (3:44.12), Ron Obodai (3:35.07) and Joanna Mundie (4:26.19).
M55 Robert Nagorski recorded 3:17.38 at the Kosice Marathon in Slovakia for an improvement of some 25 minutes over his race in Helsinki last year, finishing 173rd of 1,393 runners.
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