BUCS Indoors Athletics Championship 2013

On Friday 22nd February, the Athletics and Cross country club travelled to Sheffield for the Annual Indoor Championships, hoping to continue their success from the recent cross country championships.

On Friday night, Dan Rebolledo and Malcolm Gledhill raced in the 60m. Both ran good races with Malcolm narrowly missing out on the semi finals.

Saturday brought the heats for many of the athletes. Jake Bradley ran first in the 1500m, running a sensible race to finish in a personal best time of 4:33.28. He beat this time on Wednesday while running for the RAF by 5 seconds.

The 1500m was shortly followed by the heats of the mens 800m. John Wright raced a great race to finish in 2:00.07. A great time for the winter period, good enough to make the Semi Finals.

Neil Woodfine and Emily Bonnet ran next in the 400m. Neil ran a good race however missed out on qualification for the Semi Finals. Emily stormed her race to win it comfortably, easing into the Semis.

Alex Teuton was up next in the 3000m. He lead his heat up to the last 200m where he was out sprinted into the finish where he still smashed his previous PB by 10 seconds to run a time of 8:31 and qualify for the final. Sophie Darling also smashed her PB to run a time of 11:00.12.

The mens 4x200m team won their heat, however it was only the fastest 6 teams who reached the final, and the team unfortunately didn’t make the final.

The second day brought the heats of the 200m. Dan and Malcolm both ran again. Dan ran a PB and Malcolm made the semi-final.

John Wright used the Semi Final to test his race strategy and went out harder than usual and payed for it, tiring in the last lap but learnt a lot. Emily followed in her 400m Semi Final, again winning comfortably and qualifying for the Final! Malcolm ran extremely well in his Semi to finish in 4th but not making the final. Alex Teuton followed next in the 3000m Final. The pack were almost jogging round for the first 2500m but suddenly kicked dropping one runner at a time to leave a final 3 to race for the final 200m Alex came a very impressive 8th place. Not bad for someone in his first year at Uni, watch out for this name!

Emily was the final person to race on the weekend. She was already guaranteed a top 6 placing due to the nature of indoor racing. She was in 6th after the first lap of the 200m track, however showed her hurdles strength to power the last 200m to come in 4th in a very high standard 400m competition!

This, yet again, was the best the team have ever performed at the indoors. 3 PBs, 3 Semis and 2 finals. Will the team ever stop improving? Once again thanks for the support from everyone in the team to help us get there!