Spring Handicap, 29th April 2019
Well done to Janet Palmer on winning the Spring handicap by a mile and to Julija Simpson, the winner of the Spring knockout trophy.
A beautiful, sunny evening on the Town Moor with very little wind made for excellent running conditions. Numbers were down on recent events with only 32 competitors – though a number of members did have the excuse of having run the London Marathon the day before! There was a new obstacle to negotiate this year as stile into the woods has been replaced by a tall, metal fence with just a narrow gap to get through. There had been some debate as to whether it was too narrow and we should change the course, but we decided to give a go. Happily everybody got through unscathed.
In the race, Janet Palmer took full advantage of some (unintentionally) generous handicapping and romped home well clear of Violeta Tsenova in second place. Violeta, running her first Claremont handicap, was herself well clear of another debutant, Nina Jentl in third. This followed an excellent parkrun where Violeta had knocked about 90 seconds of her PB – it was lucky for her that the handicaps had been set before that performance!
Kat Truong also ran well to finish 4th and then it was very close from 5th to 30th with only 44 seconds separating the 26 runners.
Fastest on the night was our super speedy German, Philipp Grimmer in an excellent time of 18:13. It is a shame Philipp is only a temporary resident in Newcastle and he will have returned home before the next handicap. Next fastest was Daniel Mourenza in 19:06 followed by myself (Tom Tinsley) in 20:20. Fastest lady on the night was Sarah Kerr in 20:40, followed by Violeta (22:57) and Nina Jentl (23:41).
The Spring Cup Final was contested between Julija Simpson, David Lydall and Hazel Juggins, with Richard Slack sitting it out with the feeble excuse of having run a marathon the day before! Julija came in 5 seconds ahead of Hazel with David 3rd.
Julija will have a chance to defend her title in the summer when the other finalists will be Ben Wetherall, Jamie Harding and Michael Teasdale.
It should be noted that some people have questioned their times, so Bill is going to download again and check them all. Watch this space!
Photos courtesy of Gill, Mungai and myself are on our Flickr feed here:
