Last weekend was a busy one for many Athletic Club members.
On Saturday, the venue was the Oval Sports Centre and the match was the Merseyside Schools' meeting. After first qualifying in the Wirral Schools in order to compete here, the aim was to further qualify to compete in the All-England Schools meeting in Cannock on July 9th/10th. Standards were high.
TARGETS
Oona Norris and Karen Howley had as their targets 2min. 25sec. for their 800m, a formidable task when one realises that their recent best performances were 2min. 35.7sec. and 2min. 40.2. They improved these to 2min. 34.8 and 2min. 37.5 when finishing 4th and 5th in their heats. New member Dave Smith managed 2min. 24.8sec. for his 800m, his target being 2min. 10sec.
Two intermediate boys had qualified to compete in the 1500m. Kevin McGee managed 4inin. 35sec. to finish fourth. Tommy Bond finished seventh at 4min. 47sec., 4sec. outside his personal best.
Chris Wright smashed his best performance for the 3000m, when chasing 9min. 13sec.
With very little training, Neil Tunstall again lowered his 80m hurdles time from 13.3sec. to 13sec. He finished a very close 4th place in his heat.
Sunday saw a depleted senior men's squad travel to Pilkington's, St. Helens, to compete in the first round of the Pye Gold Cup.
HAMMER
Chris Preston came fourth in the hammer with a season's best of 44m 55cm, second in the discus, with a personal best of 34m 85cm, and third in the shot in yet another season's best of 11m 36cm. He also ran the second leg of the 4 x 100 relay. Sunday was very hot and not the best of days to run a 5000m, 12½ laps of the cinder track. Rod Dixon, the club captain, however, chose to run in this event and finished sixth with a time of 16min 59sec. Pete Jones had another superb day, returning 2min. 2sec. for his 800m and equalling his personal best performance of 52sec. in his 400m. Tim Guest pleased himself, and others in the 100m and 200m with times of 11.9sec. and 23.1sec. Tim also ran a spectacular anchor leg in the 4 x 400 relay, moving the team from sixth to fifth place and returning a time of 50.3sec.
Tomorrow, Saturday, sees a fund-raising drive with Cubs at their Twickenham Drive headquarters; and on Sunday there is the Wirral Sports Festival annual promenade road races from Egremont, commencing 2.30 p.m.
Ends
Source - Wallasey News - Saturday, 19/06/1976 by DH
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