In the National Young Athletes Road Relay Championships at Sutton Park, Sutton Coldfield , Birmingham, the u/15 Boys ran extremely well to finish 17th out of 75 Teams who finished. Adam Ord gave them a fine start on the 1st leg finishing 20th returning a time of 13.19, Izaak Taylor then had the difficult task of trying to hold that position on the 2nd leg with the opposition teams mounting their attacks and although he dropped places, finished in a time of 14.09  only 50secs down on his teammate’s time. However, Sam Gibson gave chase on the 3rd and final leg pulling back the deficit and got the Team into an excellent top 20 placing finishing 17th, recording 13.17 (5th fastest time on this leg) for the 3.88klm course, the Team recording an overall time of 40.45.

The u/17 Men’s Team also did well against some very strong and more experienced Teams, and they ran solidly throughout, results of which were as follows :  Cameron Thomas (44th) 13.05, Alfie Phillips (49th) 13.56, Jacob Stephenson (46th) 14.15 (overall time 41.16) finishing 46th out of 57 completed Teams that finished.

Meanwhile, in the National Road Relays for Seniors later in the day, the Durham City Men’s Team got off to an unfortunate start.The in-form Robin Linten who was on the 1st leg suffered from a bout of nausea in the early stage of his 5.88km leg but he was brave enough to carry on to the finish obviously disappointed with himself, but intent not to let the other 5 members of the team down. The results in the end were as follows: Robin Linten (85th) 21.01, Jonny Wilkinson (83rd) 20.25, Rob Everson (79th) 19.56, Michael Grimes (72nd) 19.47,  Chris Wilkinson  (77th)  22.29, Cameron Allan (72nd) 20.21 (overall time 2.03.59). 72nd out of 82 completed Teams that finished, the probable position on which roughly the Team would have predicted anyway with 2 changes we had to make from the original which helped us gain qualification for these National Road Relays, a great Team effort by all the runners who took part. Incidentally, Morpeth were the first NE Team to finish in 20th place, followed by Tyne Bridge 31st, Gateshead 34th, North Shields 61st, and Durham 72nd.

Top 20 finish by u15 Boys Team in National Road Relay