Hercules Wimbledon athletes in road race action

BY GEORGE MALLETT

Hercules Wimbledon Athletic Club athletes competed at a number of road races across the country.

Alex Milne competed in the Bideford Half Marathon and finished fifth in 68:51. The annual event starts in the town and sees the athletes follow the River Torridge into the heart of Devon, before returning in a 10km sprint to towards the coast.

Milne, a GB international as an ultramarathon runner, boasts a 2:17:40 marathon best. He joked that the race saw him reach “marathon pace at half-marathon effort”, an indication that his fitness is not quite at his best. The race was won by fellow GB international Ronnie Richmond, who broke the course record to finish in 65:36.

Milne will be forgiven for enjoying some downtime after a stellar 2022 where he twice ran under 2:18 for the marathon, first by finishing 12th in the Manchester Marathon in April and then 64th in the Valencia marathon in December.

In between the two, Milne also represented Great Britain over 50km, finishing sixth in 2:54:33 to earn team gold at the European Championships in Spain.

Hercules had runners competing at the Cambridge Half Marathon on Sunday. First home for the club was James Stockings, who finished in 1:08:30 for 18th place.

It marks the end of a sequence of four races in four weekends for Stockings, beginning with the a Surrey League top-20 in mid-February and also seeing him finish inside the top 100 in the English National Cross-Country Championships in Chester last weekends.

His performance at Cambridge represents a PB by almost 30 seconds, a time which ranked him just outside the UK’s top 200 in 2022.

Also competing in Cambridge was Austin Hall, who finished 267th, running a new PB of 78:56. It is his first time under 80 minutes and is a 92 second improvement on his previous best mark. Hall was also seen competing last weekend at the National Cross Country champs, where he finished 551st.

Frederick Slemeck represented Winchester & District Athletics Club as a second-claim member at the fifth and final fixture of the Hampshire Cross-Country League in Bournemouth. Slemeck, fresh off a 42nd-placed finish at the English National, finished third to help Winchester to the league title.

It gives Slemeck the unusual distinction of having won two different leagues for two different clubs, adding to the Surrey League Division One title he won in February for Hercules. Slemeck was the first individual from any club across the four fixtures in Hercules’ pursuit of the title.

Slemeck will now look to the Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships on Saturday at Prestwood Hall, Loughborough, where he aims to help defend Surrey’s title from 2022.