Weekly Update Tuesday 16th February

This week we have some virtual and face to face competition results for you; some free conferences that should be of interest to our officials, committee/trustees, coaches plus any teachers in the club and some fundraising news and opportunities too.

Results:

Saturday 13th February saw two of our club superstars invited to participate in Manchester in an indoor athletics fixture. It turned out to be a very successful day too, with two wins, two indoor personal bests and two qualifying times achieved for the European Indoor Athletics Championships, which are being held in March at Torun, Poland. Joseph Brier ran 46.17 over 400m and Verity Ockenden 8:51.63 over 3000m. Both now have a nervous wait to see if the selectors from British Athletics will take them to Poland. We are sure they both will do a magnificent job if selected.

From Friday 12th to Monday 15th February inclusive, were the Welsh Athletics 5 mile virtual road relays for the U17 to Masters age groups, plus some shorter time trials for the U11 to U15 age groups. In the 5 mile relay our top 4 mens and womens individual times were added together for the team total, eventually placing the squad in 7th overall, which meant that the squad misses out representing Wales V Scotland, Ireland & England in the next round. Nevertheless the team performed admirably in what was a very well contested event with 26 clubs finishing teams. Our scoring eight were 6th: Sam Joseph (26:52), 27th: Edward Cullen (28:58), 33rd: Michael Bryant (29:15), 34th: Ifan Lloyd (29:19), 147th: Llinos Jones (33:47), 253rd: Julie Hartley-Green (36:59), 255th: Penny Kennedy (37:02), 332nd: Jenny McAdie (39:12), for a total team time of 4 hours, 21 minutes and 21 seconds. Click here for the full results.

In the junior time trials making her competitive debut for the club was U11G Alice Caldwell in the 1 mile recording a time of 9.14. In the U13 2km first home for the club was Chloe Hartley-Green in 7:23 followed by Libby Hale U13G 7:26; Millie Pierce 7:42; Martha Caldwell 9:10. and Imogen Mcadie 10:17. In the U15 3km we had just the two runners with Sophie Hartley-Green recording a time of 11.35 and Kaitlyn Jones 12.35. Very well done to all the girls, we will see them all in action again this weekend in the Welsh Athletics 1 mile virtual challenge, with hopefully a few boys from the club in action too. click here for the full results.

Welsh Athletics Officials, Clubs, Coaching & Schools Athletics Virtual Conferences:

You can register your attendance for any of the conferences by purchasing a free ticket via Eventbrite, there will be the opportunity to attend the whole of each conference or to attend the sessions that interest you the most. Nearer to the time, all those who have signed up will receive an email with the separate Zoom/Teams links for each session. For more content and topics for each of the conferences follow this link.

Fundraising Thanks:

Amazon has donated £11.26 Swansea Harriers Athletics Club as a result of AmazonSmile programme activity between 1st October and 31st December, 2020. Thank you to everyone who has been utilising this newly set up fundraising initiative for the club, it is much appreciated. However we can do much better than £11 to raise even more much needed revenue for when training and competition resumes. In fact there are three different options to help raise money for the club, all of which you can read about and sign up for here.