Harriers Calling: and here are the long awaited results ….

This was of course the weekend of the Eurovision contest and the very recent newsflashes received with my smart phone gave a good flavor from the various Harriers sections about what was happening over the weekend. Thanks to our genius web master Eddie Toner I did not even need to connect to a computer as now all Harriers news are send directly per email to my iPhone  nicely packed with a short preview and a reference where the remaining info can be found, how convenient! The frantic Harries activities from this weekend started off like “Here is Helensburgh calling, Scott giving a very personal report about his excellent 10k run and the associated trials and tribulation of still running a very fast 34.50 as a vet M40. This should hopefully give our youngster encouragement to look at athletics in a different way, that training and competition does not necessarily stop when you are grown up but can continue throughout your adult life..

By flicking through my Facebook, I then came across a photo from Cameron Wilson winning a 10k race, so it was off to Dunlop Calling, when I received an email from Andy Kyle who passed on his results. Great news not only had a senior Harrier won the 10 K men’s race, 2 females juniors Shona Bean and Clair Orr had jointly won the 5k and on top Shona’s brother Dylan came also second in his 3k race. It seems that Harriers were busy all over the country, so why not finish with my report: Aberdeen calling!

3 Harriers had an early rise at 5.30am to catch the bus at 6.30am from the AAA on route to Aberdeen to compete in the Scottish Women’s League for their respective second claim clubs. The match was held in Aberdeen, the venue of this year’s National Age Group Championships.

Evie Bartl (Giffnock North) had a superb competition throwing 8.60m in the shot put for 3rd place and coming second in the javelin. Her javelin coach Robert Wilkie had passed on his advice after finishing training on Monday that I should remind Evie that whatever she does she should focus on speed, which she has been focusing on throughout the recent training sessions. Evie started her javelin competition with a good throw of 25.65m, new PB and 2 meter further than her previous PB of 23.57m, which put her in second place and qualified her for 3 further throws. I then frantically shouted over to her to run faster in her approach, which she then did. Although she threw the next throw a decent distance it was badly controlled and out of the sector. However the second last throw proved to be Evie’s best with a new PB of 26.78m and simply because she followed the advice to increase her run up speed. Interestingly in this week’s Athletics Weekly is an article called “Knowing the physics of how objects fly through the air can help field eventers.” The speed of release is described as one of the most important factors “put simply the faster the implement is moving at time of release, the further it will go”. However, one factor has to be considered that the athlete needs to be able to control the speed without losing technique, so it often becomes an optimal speed the athlete is able to handle. Ever wondered why beginners start with standing throws?

Cara Baillie (AyrSeaforth) had a good high jump competition clearing 1.40m with her first attempt and was very unlucky indeed to fail at 1.45m. Similarly, Cara was lacking a bit speed during her run up and touched the bar slightly with her legs only while descending over the bar. After her high jump competition, Cara then took advantage of the sunshine and watched the senior pole vault competition, hopefully learning a few things from the experienced vaulters.

Hannah Bartl (Giffnock North) can be very pleased with her competition. Hannah’s main event is really the 300m but she also competed in the shot put and javelin event. Despite no specific training Hannah still managed a good javelin throw, short 3-4 steps approach and threw an excellent distance of over 22m coming third in the A string. Her shot put (4kg) was also a decent (standing) throw coming third in the B string with 7.24m. Although Hannah was not pleased with her actual 300m time of 45.86, which was considerably slower that the 45.11 she run last week while competing in the Central and South Scotland League, it was a good learning experience as the competition level was much higher.

All in all a good competition for all three athletes, who had some good competition experience in their chosen event before the upcoming championships starting with the West District and the following weeks with the Scottish Schools.