The members of Wallasey Athletic Club cast their net further afield than usual on Saturday and were competing at four different venues, Winsford, Stretford, Blackburn and Castleford.
If you were to take a hot Saturday afternoon, add 100 runners and stir in eight internationals to season, then you would have the ingredients that went to make up last week's, 7 mile road race at Winsford.
From the gun, an uphill run of 1½ miles turned the initial start into a string of breathless runners by the time the first of three 1½ mile loops was reached.
Here the arrow country lanes, without a breathe of air to relieve the humid atmosphere, gave little help to they competitors.
Colin Robinson, the Rochdale international, drew away from the leading group to win in 32 mins. 59 secs, from N. Carrington of Sale who was 21 secs., behind with T. Procter of Rochdale 3rd in 33 mins. 24 secs.
Wallasey A.C. had four competitors in the race and Dave Hughes can be very pleased with his 49th placing in 38:36 whilst Phil Wealthy and Len Durkin ran in together in 39:41 to place 60th and 61st respectively. In a race in which 24 people succumbed to the conditions and dropped out, Carl finish 77th, of the 86 die-hards who finished, in a time of 44:10.
The team award went to Sale with 26 points.
At Castleford, Barbara Banks was competing for Cheshire in the Northern Women's Inter-Counties and helped to bring her county maximum points in the 1,500 metres by finishing a close second to Cheshire colleague Jane Perry in a time of 4 mins. 38 secs.
At Blackburn, the venue for the Northern A.A.A. Championships for senior men, Dave Lockley scored the best Wallasey performance by finishing 6th in the final of a high-class 3,000 metre steeplechase in a personal best time of 9 mins. 24.8 secs., javelin thrower Eric Taylor not up to his best form to narrowly failed to make the final pool of throwers and finished 9th with a throw of 172 ft.
Pete Lewis finished fourth in his heat of the 400 metres in the same time as the third
man, 51.7 secs.
Barrie Smith, was eliminated in his heat of the 1,500 metres, but recorded a personal best of 4 mins. 0.6 secs.
A group of four athletes visited the National Standards meeting at Stretford, this type of meeting is where runners compete against the clock rather than each other.
Gary Fair and Bob Brimage competed in the youths' 1500 metres (the metric mile) and both ran well to finish 3rd and 4th, Gary with a time of 4 mins. 13.4 and Bob with a time of 4 mins. 23.4.
Doug Hanna ran in the senior 800 metres race and was well up on the first lap but faded slightly on the second to finish in 2 mins. 2 secs.
Ends
Source - Wallasey News - Friday, 04/07/1969 by B.S.
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