Herne Hill Harriers round-up: Eliza Nicholson keeps on PB-breaking trend

Eliza Nicholson has recently been setting a new club U17 women’s record on a weekly basis, writes Geoff Jerwood.

This time Harriers’ prodigious young athlete took down the U17W 1,500m record as she ran 4:27.71 at the Wormwood Scrubs Regional BMC meet last week.

Alternating 3,000m races with 1,500m ones has been a feature of her preparation for the English Schools Championships intermediate girls 3,000m at the end of this month.

On the same evening at Tooting Bec Athletics Track there was a new club M50 record of 16:12.47 for Ben Paviour at the Veterans AC 5,000m Championships.

International sprinter Kristal Awuah clocked 11.48 for 100m and 23.57 for 200m in the US at the ATL Open in Atlanta, Georgia. Awuah ran 11.49 for second in her heat, then one hundredth faster in placing seventh in the A final against a stronger headwind than in her heat.

She timed 23.57 to finish second in the B 200m final – her second fastest of the season so far and with minimal tailwind in comparison to her one faster run this year – boding well for the UK Championships & World Trials meet in Manchester over the first weekend in July.

Herne Hill U17 and U20 men and women secured promotion from their UK Youth Development League division with a third team win in three matches at Woodford Green.

There were impressive 400m runs from Keeran Sriskandarajah (51.20) and Jon Goldston (51.49) in the U17 men’s races and Nathan Latigo (51.84) and Harvey Kande (53.16) in the U20s.

Sriskandarajah ran an outdoor season’s 800m best of 1:55.02 in another BMC Regional at Eltham as he seeks the qualifying time to represent Trinidad & Tobago at their home Commonwealth Youth Games in August.

Harriers provided the second-placed women’s team at the Dulwich Runners Midsummer Road Relays (3×1.04 miles) – Sarah Grover (5:28), Helena Keenan (5:44) and Hannah Edwards (5:52). Grover recorded the second fastest female time overall.

A men’s team of Jack Coy (5:18), David Phillips (5:27) and Michael Tay (5:07) were eighth – just ahead of Alex Lee (5:05), Matt Bright (5:37) and James Stocker (5:10) in ninth.

Another men’s team of Tom Irish (5:15), Tom Foster (5:23) and Simon Evans (6:24) finished a couple of seconds ahead of the women’s team.

Prolific racer Jonathan Ratcliffe competed at the British Masters Trail Running Championships on the North Downs on Sunday.

He claimed first place in his age category (M55-59) at Gravesend, clocking 2:26 for the 30km course and was a top-20 finisher. This was Ratcliffe’s first national gold medal as he improved on his previous bronze.

Serial medalist Gaby Reynolds won the senior women’s silver medal and was also the winner in the W35-44 category with her time of 37:16 in Sunday’s Richmond 10km.

Husband Bryn Reynolds finished 11th in 34:32. Muhamud Haile was seventh M50-59 with a PB of 38:01 -Nathan Petrie (42:27), M60 Robert Nagorski (42:30), Monika Gajek (44:22) and M55 Simon Evans (45:23) were also in action.