Sid and Lauren set club records at SEAA Indoor Middle Distance Championships
Biggleswade AC U-17 juniors Sidney Hammond and Lauren Bone both narrowly missed out on medals at this year’s South of England Indoor Middle Distance Championships with 4th place finishes but had the consolation of setting new club records in their respective events.
Their achievements at the SEAA (South of England Athletic Association) competition, held at the Lee Valley Athletics Centre in north London over the weekend of December 13/14, were made even more impressive by that fact that Lauren was competing in her first ever indoor race and Sid in only his second (and his first was back in early 2023).
Sid competed against quite a strong field in the U-17M 1500m on the Saturday and started the final 200m lap in 5th position, some 20m behind the runner immediately ahead of him. He then produced a strong finish to make up 15m on that runner over the last 50m and pip him on the line to claim 4th place (out of 8), so just outside the medals. The consolation was that he set a new club U-17M indoor record for that event with a time of 4:26.51, beating the previous record, set nearly 13 years ago at the same venue, by over 11 seconds.
Lauren pretty much mirrored that performance the next day with an equally good run in the U-17W 3,000m (held as a joint U-15/U-17 race). She finished 4th in her age group and 6th (of 9 starters) in the race overall, so also just missed out on a medal, but did set a first club U-17W indoor record for that distance of 11:34.86.
RESULTS: https://meets.rosterathletics.com/public/competitions/details/schedule?id=27400