On Saturday the 13^th of August the club’s senior athletes visited Thurrock for round 4 of the Southern athletics league.  Despite battling against a temperature in the mid-30s, a less than favourable wind and traffic chaos, there were some strong results and a number of wins for Bedford athletes:

• Leanne Buxton (72.4) won the women’s 400m Hurdles by a clear margin. Katie Olive (78.6) was first in the B string
• Daniel Harding-Forbes (51.2) took the win in the men’s 400m despite being caught in traffic and only arriving 5 minutes before the race.
• Lauren Nicholls (2:25.8) won the women’s 800m with ease. Emma Smith (2:37.4) won the B string.
• The women’s 100m Hurdles saw a win for Etienne Maughan (14.6) with Leanne Buxton  taking the B string
• Leanne Buxton (10.69m) also won the women’s Shot Putt
• Craig Emmerson (9:14) - after overhearing an opposition athletes plan to ”sit and kick”- set a ferocious early pace to break the field in the first two laps of the 3000M, before easing down to win by 26 seconds. In contrast, Henry Bambrick (9:54) ran at a consistent pace, picking off many fading runners in the latter stages, to win the B string on his debut track outing for the club.
• A series of impressive change overs saw the quartet of Steven Mienambolo, Ben Mosery, Riley Johnson and Daniel Harding Forbes Cruise to victory in the Men’s 4x100m
• Caitlin Blackwell (21.87m) won the women’s B string Javelin.
• In what was probably Bedford’s performance of the day, Lyla Danobrega (5:22.8) showed immense maturity to dominate the 1500m steeplechase in her event debut.  Lyla tackled the barriers with ease, and her main challenge came from negotiating lapped athletes at barriers and the water jump.  Lyla was rewarded with an under 17club record- bettering Rebecca Murray’s 5:29.9 from 2012.  Katie Olive (6:38.7) won the B string
• There was also a PB for Noah Campion (4:17.9) who was rewarded for taking on the early pace in the 1500m. Noah eventually finished 2^nd in the race.

Bedford eventually finished the match in 3^rd place out of the 4 for teams. 

The Final SAL match of the season is on Saturday the 10^th of September at Bedford – please contact Craig Emmerson or Emma Coombes if you’d like to compete.