Game, Set and Match for Wimbledon Stragglers
Posted by on 19 August 2017
The Stragglers brought the curtain down on the 2017 road season with a fine turn out at the Wimbledon 5K dash which also doubled as the Surrey County 5K Championships.
On numbers it was ‘game set and match’ to the team in yellow with 32 Stragglers making up over 15% of the field in a highly competitive Surrey club show-down run in glorious sunshine on Sunday 13th August. The race started and finished on the running track at the Hercules Wimbledon club HQ in Wimbledon Park before describing a rather hilly loop on the roads past the All England Lawn Tennis Club and then back into the park for a final blast onto the track.
For the ladies, Sarah Winter led the way completing the course in 19:15. Sarah was being put under pressure by a strong field behind her with Heidi Russenberger finishing 10 seconds behind and Sophie Biggs making up the top 3 in 20:07. This performance narrowly missed out on the race team prize (by all of 6 seconds).
However, in the individual medals there was plenty to boast about. Firstly, for the Surrey eligible athletes there was a gold award for Dee Smale as the first Surrey F55, silver for Sarah Winter in the F35 and bronze for Sue Hall in the F45, such was the strength of our team. Sarah, Heidi and Sue also picked up the bronze County team prize. Arguably the result of the day though was Liz Killip (whilst suffering from living on the ‘wrong’ side of the Thames! and therefore not eligible for Surrey) but who won the race overall F55 prize. This had initially been erroneously awarded to an F35… but the record has now been put straight, well done Liz!
The men had an equally strong showing with Robert Wilcox, Jim Lurkins and Jonathan Ormerod the 1,2 and 3 all managing to record sub 18 minute times on the challenging course. Again, there was another very strong team behind them with several medals being grabbed by the men with both Roy Reeder and David Brewin picking up bronze for the M50 and M60 categories respectively.
The race activities were brought to an end with Ranelagh sportingly presenting the team prize to The Stragglers ladies for their performance at the Wedding Day 7K, run a few weeks previously. The prize had originally been awarded to Ranelagh (in error), but on gun time the 3 ladies in the form of Heidi Russenberger, Liz Killip and Sonia Banderia had won on the day and to be presented with the trophy by Ranelagh was a very satisfying end to the mornings work.
Here are the results. And some photos of the morning courtesy of Pam Whitter.
