Hercules Wimbledon round-up: Strong results at ‘unofficial’ version of Southern Road Relays Championships

Hercules Wimbledon Athletic Club enjoyed one of their best ever road relays performances as a host of teams headed to Aldershot for this year’s unofficial Southern Road Relays Championships, writes George Mallett.

The club’s senior men’s teams finished sixth, 17th, 29th and 41st out of 79 completed teams, with their junior sides also performing admirably.

This year saw almost all the South of England’s top clubs boycott the official Crystal Palace edition, citing poor organisation and miscommunication on behalf of the South of England Athletics Association for a number of years, with that event featuring fewer than 15 teams in the senior men’s edition.

Tom Jervis got the A team off to a flying start, guiding them to fifth on a typically competitive opening leg. Jervis’ time of 18:00 for the undulating 6km course was Hercules’ fastest of the day. Indeed such is the competition for places these days that Ed Mallett ran 18:36 for the B team, a time which took Hercules into the top 16.

The second leg saw Andrew Penney continue the strong start, running 18:22 to lift Hercules into the silver medal position.

Charlie Eastaugh, running for the B’s, was similarly impressive as he ran Hercules’ fifth fastest time overall (18:35) to take the team up to 12th.

The third leg proved the day’s most competitive as Jonathan Cornish’s 18:19, Hercules second fastest of the day, saw Hercules slip to third, Finn Johnson running 19:13 as the B’s came in 13th.

George Mallett ran 18:43 as Bedford and County moved past Hercules into third. Even a 18:20 from Dan Cliffe could not prevent them slipping to fifth as rivals backloaded their teams.

Fred Slemeck had the unenviable position of setting off ahead of Jacob Allen of Highgate Harriers on the final leg. Allen overhauled Slemeck (18:56) with a 17:42 run, the fourth fastest on the day.

Joe Croft (19:30), Archie Walton (19:33) and James Stockings (19:11) closed out the B team in 17th, meaning they beat 23 different clubs’ ‘A’ teams.

Hercules will head to the National Road Relays held at Sutton Park on October 8, hoping to better last year’s club record 10th place. The B team are hoping to secure a discretionary place from the England Road Running Association.

The U13 boys trio of Sam Dyson, Harry Allen and Theo Creed finished in a time of 33:16 with Dyson running the 12th fastest time of the day.

The U13 girls were ninth out of 27 teams thanks to Isabella Harrison, Leah Paulson and Beatrice Eminson. Like Dyson, Harrison was the 12th fastest in her age group on the day.