COVID-secure road races enable WSEH athletes to keep on racing
The shortened summer track season may have finished but enterprising race organisers have found ways to put on COVID-secure road races all across the country.
On Saturday 17th October U20 Ben Rowe took part in the RunThrough Newbury 10k races at Newbury race course coming in 12th overall and taking an amazing 3 minutes and 47 seconds from his previous best set in 2018.
The iconic Mallory Park Race Circuit in Leicestershire was the setting for a high quality 5km festival on Sunday 18th October featuring 6x 5k races with up to 30 athletes in each race running 3 laps of the oval circuit. To ensure social distancing within each race, groups of 6 runners started at 10 second intervals (ranked according to forecast time). The 30 runners who had forecast the 30 slowest times started in race 1 and the races progressed until the fastest 30 men competed in race 6. In addition, the races were spaced 40 minutes apart, allowing finishers from the previous race to clear the circuit and the facilities.
Both Alex Barbour and Tilly Compton-Stewart of WSEH took part in the event with Tilly running in race 1 and Alex in race 2. Tilly, who was running in her 1st ever 5K ran 18:46.5 and Alex, in only her 2nd 5K improved her 2018 time by a massive 84 seconds from 18:21 to 16:57 which ranked her 17th female overall on the day (and gives her a high likelihood of being upgraded to the fastest women’s race in the next event of the series).
Full results of the Newbury 10K here.
Full results of the Mallory Park 5K Festival here.
