From Geoff Howard…

A couple of weeks earlier in the year than usual, the Leeds Beckett University track at Carnegie hosted the annual Leeds Golden Mile time trial on the afternoon of Saturday 24 August.

Conducted in traditional 1950s Roger Bannister, Iffy Road Oxford, style with starting pistol and three time keepers holding stop watches, ten races were run during the afternoon with an average of about ten competitors in each. The first four were all for under 17 year old runners with runs five to ten for progressively quicker over 16 year old runners. One under 16 girl, Madison Kinder of Brentwood Beagles, ran the ninth fastest time of the day in 5m 3s being the fastest women and outrunning ten of the fastest adults in heats nine and ten – surely a name to look out for!

If I had been in her heat she would easily have lapped me with my disappointing 7m 38s (7m 14s last year and 7m 31s during a 5k park run in March). To my surprise it was the quickest age group time in the country this year but, there again, there are only two other times listed by runbritain. This fact, together with me being the only Harrier at the meet, goes to illustrate that a mile on the track just isn’t (surprisingly to me) a popular race these days despite its iconic status in the athletics world.

Fastest man: Luke Shacklock, Harrogate AC, 4m 39.5s