Race Date: Saturday 27th April 2024

Chris, Jed and I made our way to Doncaster for the athletics clubs’ spring open track meeting. I had never run at the Keepmoat athletics track before and didn’t realise the track was situated next to a stadium I’ve been to a few times (to watch the mighty Blues, amongst other events!).

We arrived on a pleasant afternoon and got ourselves registered and warmed up before the main events (well, for me…): 800m and Donny Mile. There was some confusion over what time both events were expected to be held as there were different versions of the timetable placed around the stadium. In the end, Jed and I had about 40 minutes to get loose – this entailed doing a couple of loops of the Keepmoat (a novelty on a non-matchday) and strides on the track.

Before the races, I chatted with Dave, Jenny and some of the team from Blizard and their Run Club. I have been working with Dave Tune for a while now and they have played an enormous part in my progression over the past few years, so it was good to see them all. Plus, they are local so not far for them to watch some high quality entertainment!

The first event for Jed and I was the 800m and this race started earlier than timetabled. My pace was a little bit too hot on the first 200m and the wind on the 300m bend seemingly sucked the air out of me! But I managed to rally to a 800m PB – I hope I’ve got plenty more quicker times this year to come though… Jed was less happy with his time but his focus is on the end of the summer, so this is a promising start towards building for those future events – which are still a long way off. He also blamed his bright socks!

Next was the turn of Chris (and me again!) in the illustrious Donny Mile. This was about 20 minutes after the 800m. We all felt that the women’s mile race that went off just before could have merged with the men’s race considering both the finishing times and that there were only 3 runners in the women’s race and not many more in the men’s race! However, perhaps, separating the event is necessary for records purposes. Unlike the 800m that had gone before, the mile race worked out to be a fairly consistent one for me. I ran a 2 mile and 1 mile race back-to-back in January and those felt more of a grind – maybe, everything is when you’re running around a track in Barnsley (only joshing!).

Chris in the Donny Mile (photo by Chris Cull)

Anyway, I got speaking to the guy in the Blizard vest, Rob (pictured above), after the 800m, who had finished the race just as I was entering the home straight, and I thought if I could stay ahead of his planned pace that would be a success. I managed to do just that and Chris showed a decent account of himself too! Similar to Jed he has hopes of building into the latter part of the season nicely.

The meet was a little light on numbers but, nonetheless, a good local season opener for us all. 3 Striders attended this meeting. Our race results and the complete results are below.

800m result (SM heat): 8 total runners