It’s all quality not quality for city club
With the start of the track and field season plus road races and parkrun, Chichester Runners have been in action over a variety of surfaces and distances in recent weeks.
It is exactly 29 years since Chichester entered their first ever athletics league in 1994, ten years after the formation of the club in 1984.
Dartford was the destination for the opening Southern League fixture of the season with Chichester taking a smaller team than usual but pleased to be a separate team again after joiuning forces with Worthing Harriers for the past two years.
What the team lacked in numbers they more than made up for in quality with sprinting duo of Fleur Hollyer and Amelie Mcgurk scoring a ckean sweep in both 100 and 200m.
Mcgurk then went on to finish runner-up in the 400m battling against a string headwind down the back staright and top bend.
After a few years away from the sport, multi-eventer Ethan Brown showed good all-round speed and strength with good marks in both long jump and javelin plus good speed over 200m and a fine dislay of hurdle technique in the 110m sprint hurdles.
With a wide variety of age groups involved in the league from under-17s to veteran, three of Chichester’s 2022 under-15 squad pitted themselves against some good county standard athletes from Kent, Sussex and Hampshire with all three acquitting themselves with credit.
Jess Beach coped well with the heavier implements in the shot put and set a good mark in the discus later in the competition.
Both Sam Wyatt and Sam Cato have been part of the club’s under-15 cross country squad over the winter but both stepped up well into the senior ranks with Cato showing good speed over 100m and 400m with Wyatt opting forb the 200m and long jump. The pair combined to gain near maximum points in the high jump.
With the next fixture at Lewes on June 18, Chichester hope to have nearly a full strength squad to challenge for top spot.
Ben Morton lined up amid the cream if British middle distance running at Parliament Hill, London, in the Night of the 10,000s, now one of the highlights of the summer fixture list.
Morton was rewarded with a new best of 32min 35.6sec to go with his road 10k best of 32.09 set in Trafford in March.
Round-up
Alice Cox-rusbridge set one of the fastest ever times by a Chichester women with a 1hr 25.19min clocking in the Batterseaparkhalfmarathon – then managed a new PB of 19.20 in the Bognor parkrun a week later.
Mike Houston set a fine personal best in the Newport Wales marathon recently in a time of 2.36.18.
Houston showed excellent powers of recovery by finishing 4th in the recent Bognor 10k and helping Chichester Runners win the team prize with teammates James Baker in 6th and Callum Lorimer 25th.
sussexworld.co.uk/sport