Team gold for Sarnian five
ULRIKE MAISCH met her match in trying to defend her Jersey Marathon title but any sorrow was undermined by another golden performance by our top women’s relay squad.
Defending champion Maisch put in a commendable and well-paced run of 2hrs 59min. 3sec. only to be relegated to second by the runaway winner, Ukranian Khrystyna Bohomiahkova, who was already 10 minutes over the line by the time the Guernseywoman had finished.
But Maisch could still enjoy a decent ending to a hard season that recently featured an Ironman triathlon debut and August’s dominant Guernsey Marathon win.
‘I’m not complaining, I’m happy with the race,’ she said.
‘The lady who won ran a 2-47 this year already so I knew she’d be good, there’s no chance I could have run that quick.
‘Time didn’t matter, but I wanted to place well. My husband [fellow marathon star Richard Friedrich] and boys cheered me on along the course, which was nice.’
By then, Guernsey’s desire for a winning finish had already been settled by the five-woman relay squad of Sabrina Amy, Vanessa Rodrigues, Louise Perrio, Jenny James and Laura McCarthy.
With the latter three returning from recent ‘Southerns’ team gold, the Guernsey women started inarguable favourites and got their main kicks against a mostly-women Jersey team of ‘Born to Run’.
They exchanged positions throughout, but McCarthy’s strong anchoring brought Guernsey home two minutes ahead in a cumulative 2-47-31 – nearly half an hour ahead of the next women-only team.
The men’s squad of Rich Hann, Chris Gillman, James Priest, Warwick Helps and Tom Shaw ran well too but settled for second, 8min. back on Elliott Dorey's Jersey team.
Topping the remaining individuals, marathon second-timer Ben Wilen recorded a new PB of 2-53-25 for 12th overall and triathlon-based Dave Mosley debuted superbly with his own sub-3hrs time.
Fellow debuting marathoner Mel Nicolle fought off a late cramp to claim 3-27-50, seventh woman and an outside place on the club women’s all-time list.
The Jersey Marathon weekend wasn’t all that Guernsey Athletics had on the agenda.
The previous day, their men’s squad took to Sutton Park, Birmingham, to race the National Six-Stage Road Relays for the first time ever.
The particularly young squad, featuring five university students, were well aware of the challenge presented by the national elite and just about sated their top-50 target with 49th overall.
Richard Bartram kicked it off with a strong sub-19min starting leg over 5.8km, with only the team’s senior ace Ryan Burling, 24, surpassing this among the Sarnians with 17-56.
The remaining cast of Dan Galpin, Ed Mason, Chris Way and Alex Rowe kept the positions pretty stable to ensure that the up-and-coming Sarnians set a solid marker for years to come.
