Three Striders competed at Sheffield’s excellent indoor track at EIS on January 4th, avoiding the worst of the wintry weather.

Nearly 50 years back Striders had a strong presence on the local track and field scene, and a number of the club records still date from the late 1980’s.  Ruth Shield, Rachel Leonard, Phil Murray and Pete Wakefield amongst others set some formidable times which have proved difficult to surpass.  It is great to see some of the current members having a go at those tough targets, with the long-standing 4 x 400m senior men’s record being broken just a few weeks ago.

Naomi Tuckett has been showing great form over the 800 metres recently.  She would almost certainly be a record holder already except for an unfortunate computer error at the South Yorkshire Olympics in July when no official results were produced.  On Saturday she had two targets in mind  – the vets record of 2.29.7 set by Rachel Leonard in 1988, and the overall club record of 2.23.9 set by Ruth Shield in 1986.  Naomi took the race on from the start, operating at 2.24 pace for the first couple of laps.  On this occasion the lactic acid caught up with her but she still held on to take Rachel’s veterans record in 2.29.4.

I felt honoured to be present for Naomi’s run.  Rachel Leonard was my sister so I’m thrilled that her record lasted for nearly four decades, but I’m also pleased that such a worthy athlete as Naomi has finally broken it.  I’m sure Naomi will be threatening Ruth Shield’s senior mark very soon.

At present the club only has one record per event for all veteran athletes, which makes it a tough ask for us more “mature” (old) athletes to ever make it on to the list.  Very soon we hope to rectify this by publishing Track and Field records in all veteran 5-year age groups – there are a horde of great track performances in the F70 age group.  Jed Turner will no doubt feature heavily on the new lists.  Following his fine run to win the European Masters 1500m title in Madeira he took on the mile this time round, running an excellent 5.35, good enough to beat the M65 mile mark, which the current holder, Peter Brown, probably didn’t even know he held.

It was good to see Kate Scott back in track action and she took on her usual busy schedule with a 400 metre & 800 metre double.  She was frustrated to be just over 3 minutes in the 800m but both runs were solid efforts and a good baseline for the upcoming season.  No club records for Kate this time round but she already has a bucket-full to her name and will no doubt be adding the Pentathlon to that list in the coming months.

The next Run Jump Throw event will be on 24th January – entries are open now and close on Jan 14th.

Striders Results: