AVEAC all rounder Ben Pitts took part in the North West Combined Events Meeting at Wavetree Stadium, Liverpool last Saturday and Sunday and came away with the gold medal and a new personal best in the Under 20 Men’s Decathlon.
Ben started Day 1 clocking 12.58 seconds in the 100m in windy conditions, not conducive to fast sprinting. A solid Long Jump of 6.03m was followed by two PBs in the Shot where he added ten centimetres on to his previous best with a throw of 8.88m and in the High Jump where he cleared 1.86m. The swirling winds did affect the 400m performances with Ben returning a time of 58.38 seconds, half a second down on his best ever mark, set earlier in the year at the Birmingham Indoor Games.
Day Two started with the 110m Hurdles with Ben recording 17.38 seconds. His best Discus throw was 31.06m and he then went on to clear 3.60m in the Pole Vault. An impressive Javelin throw of 44.36m was an improvement of over two metres on his previous best performance. Going into the last event, the 1500m, Ben was leading the event overall and maintained that position with a well paced effort in the three and three quarters lap race, rewarded with his fourth PB of the weekend. A time of 5 minutes 14.56 seconds knocked over nine seconds off his previous best run over this distance.
When the points were finally tallied up, Ben had scored 5269 points, adding 212 points to the score he set in late June at the Midland School Championships. Ben will have one more crack at the Decathlon before the end of the season when he takes part in the English Schools Combined Events finals at Bedford on September 17th and 18th.
Alice Robinson also took part at the Liverpool event competing in the Senior Women’s Heptathlon. Overall she scored 2918 points to finish in sixth place. Alice recorded two personal bests with a clearance of 1.32m in the High Jump and in the 800m, where she crossed the line in 2 minutes 44.43 seconds, an improvement of over five seconds on her previous best. She also recorded two good throwing performances in the Shot and Javelin with throws of 9.28m in the former and 30.74m in the latter. Her performances in the sprint hurdles, 200m and Long Jump were badly affected by the windy conditions which meant that her final score was slightly down on her PB set earlier in the Summer at the University of Birmingham Combined Events meeting.
National Athletics League Finals, Bedford – Saturday 20th August
Seniors Scott Ram and Tamsin McGraw competed for their higher claim clubs at the National Athletics League finals last Saturday.
Decathlete Scott, competing for Notts AC contributed quite a number of points to the overall team performance. He finished sixth in the 110m Hurdles with a slightly windy 15.92 seconds, filled the same position in the Long Jump with a distance of 6.24m and was tenth overall in the Pole Vault clearing 3.33m.
Tamsin competing for Sheffield and Dearn AC finished third in the 800m B race with a respectable time of 2 minutes 14.63 seconds.
This weekend there will be quite a few of the Club’s athletes taking part in the annual ‘Stars of the Future’ meeting hosted by Charnwood AC at the Paula Ratcliffe Track, Loughborough.
Words – Joe McColgan
Photo acknowledgement – Trev Green, North West Combined Events