Northern Counties Road Relay Championships
‘Sport City’ Manchester
Saturday 16th September 2017
The annual Northern Athletics road relay championships were held this year at Sport City in Manchester. Kingston upon Hull AC put out two representative teams, a 6 stage senior men’s and a young athletes 3 stage under 15 boys team.
103 teams contested the senior men’s 6.5 kilometre 6 stage relays plus another 13 incomplete teams and a grand total of 714 athletes ran in the six legs.
The senior men’s team consisted of Harry Powell, Baldvin Magnusson, Jack Brothwell, Gregan Clarkson, Tom Whitley and Jack Arnold.
Harry Powell took the baton out for the first leg and he ran a tremendous race covering the course in a time of 20:16 sec and handed over the baton in 21st place to Baldvin Magnusson who produced another good time of 20.42 sec before giving the baton to Jack Brothwell who covered the third leg in 22:07 sec and handed over to the old man of the team Gregan Clarkson who put in a solid run of 21:37 sec on the 4th leg and handed over the baton to Tom Whitley for the 5th who navigated the course in 25:25 and Jack Arnold ran the final leg in a time of 24:32 sec to bring the team home in overall 35th place, nine places higher than last year’s championships.
The under 15’s team consisted of Thomas Smales, Adam Fox and Harvey Roberts and a total of 44 teams of three and another 8 incomplete teams contested the three kilometre course, with a grand total of 142 athletes in competition in the race.
Thomas Smales led the team off and he was promptly flattened at the start when pushed over by the lead runner from Durham, despite ending up right at the back he picked himself up and fought his way up through the field and finished the leg with a nice bruise on his knee and in 32nd place running a time of 12:02 sec, Adam Fox took up the baton and he ran the fastest leg in the team clawing back 9 places with a superb run of 11:42 sec, handing over to Harvey Roberts who on the final leg clawed back another 5 places for the team and carried the baton over the finishing line with another good run of 12:01 sec, which saw the team finish in 18th place overall.
Coaches Gregan Clarkson and Paul Fox were ‘So proud of the lads today, they were all brilliant’. It was the first road relay event they had coached them too.
