Over the weekend of the 18th & 19th of January, athletes competing in the England Athletics Senior & U20 Indoor Combined Events Championships descended on the EIS in Sheffield. Included within a strong field of 29 athletes in the senior men heptathlon competition were two AVEAC athletes, with Ben Pitts and Scott Ram pulling on their yellow vests to participate in the championships for the third and fifth times respectively.
Day one started out with the 60m sprint, with the two AVEAC athletes running in separate heats. Running in heat ‘B’, Ben was up first and started his competition in fine fashion as he crossed the line in a new personal best time of 7.49 seconds. Two races later Scott came agonisingly close to his own PB, crossing the line in heat ‘D’ in a time of 7.26 seconds, just 0.04 off his best. The second event of the day was the long jump, where both gentlemen were a little short of their best leaps, with Scott achieving a distance of 6.51m and Ben recording a jump of 6.09m. Next up for the AVEAC pair was the shot put, where Scott scored a solid throw of 11.86m, however Ben came away from the event a bit disappointed with his best throw of 9.78m. The fourth and final discipline of the first day was high jump, with both athletes jumping well. Ben recorded a leap of 1.93m to finish fourth overall and steady his ship ahead of day two, with clubmate Scott ending his day with a clearance of 1.75m, just 3cm short of his PB in the event.
Day two started back on the short stretch of track in the centre of the arena, with both athletes running well in their 60m hurdles heats. Scott equalled the PB he had set the previous week in Loughborough, crossing the line in second place with a time of 8.51 seconds. Ben also finished his race in second place, recording a solid time of 9.15 seconds. The second event of the day saw the AVEAC pair head over to the pole vault, where Ben earned himself a new PB, beating his previous best by 10cm as he cleared 4.10m, with Scott recording a respectable clearance of 3.80m. The final event of the competition saw the athletes return to the track for the 1,000m event, with the AVEAC pair competing directly against each other for the first time in the weekend. Scott came out on top finishing the race in second place, crossing the line in a time of 2:45.40 to earn fourth place overall. Just two places behind his clubmate, Ben finished in fourth place, claiming his second PB of the day (third of the competition), as he crossed the line in a time of 2:49.02, beating his previous best by 7.5 seconds.
The final standings saw Scott end the competition in twelfth place overall, with a final points tally of 4,909, just 123 points below his PB set at this event last year. Similar to the result of their 1,000m race in the competition, Ben finished just two places behind Scott, claiming fourteenth place with a total of 4,668 points, his fourth PB of the weekend and an improvement of 182 points.
Report – Ian Pitts, Jayne Ram & Dan Humphrey