Herne Hill Harriers round-up: Katie Snowden sets new 1,500m PB and achieves Olympic qualifying time

BY GEOFF JERWOOD

Katie Snowden produced a storming victory at the Sound Running Track Meet in Irvine, California on Saturday.

The 27-year-old Herne Hill Harrier finished strongly for her biggest win to date in the women’s 1,500m race and achieved the Olympic qualifying time as she took over two seconds off her PB to clock 4:02.98.

Snowden surprised many, including the ESPN race commentators, with her finishing straight charge to the line as she defeated a world-class field. She was just over half a second quicker than Olympic 800m finalist Kate Grace with Australian Jessica Hull third. Former world steeplechase champion Emma Coburn and former world 800m silver medalist Melissa Bishop-Nriagu were fourth and fifth respectively.

This stunning breakthrough performance lowers Snowden’s own club senior women’s record and elevates her to second in the 2021 UK rankings for this event behind Laura Muir.

Snowden now returns home to Balham after two months of altitude training in Arizona. She will plan some 800m races in preparation for the British Championship and Olympic Trials meeting in Manchester at the end of next month.

Snowden was not the only Harrier competing at this big meeting.

Kristal Awuah ran the second race of her outdoor track season, having opened her 100m account eight days earlier with a wind-assisted 11.62 in Houston, Texas. She placed eighth in her event clocking 11.69 with a legal wind this time.

Awuah also has the Manchester trials meeting as her first big target for this year.

Other Harriers in local action included Bryn Reynolds at the RunThrough Battersea Park road races on Saturday morning. He clocked 33:35 for eighth place on the first wave in the 10km race. His wife Gaby clocked 36:53 to replicate her PB from 2017 and saw her finish third female overall and first W35. Laura Donnely placed 10th female with 39:56.

In the 5km races in Batersea at the same event, Ryan Willmott lowered his PB to 16:15 to finish fifth while Adam Westbury was 17th (17:27) and Jonathan Boyle was 26th (18:26).

Eric Dol was a superb race winner at Saturday’s Eastbourne Track Marathon where he ran for 26.2 miles around a 400m track in a PB of 2:46.54.

Dol has only run 200 miles in the past eight weeks, which is low volume for serious marathon racing, but he has “supplemented” this with cycle rides from London to Bristol and then back again and also an even more epic London to Manchester through the Peak District. A novel approach to running success.

Jeff Cunningham ran his first 3,000m steeplechase on Saturday since pre-covid (10:45.1).

Myles Preston clocked 17:37.5 in a 5,000m race at the famous four-minute mile track at Iffley Road, Oxford.