Match Report Cardiff 5KM

MATCH REPORT CARDIFF 5KM

Sunday 5th May 2024 Cardiff

Report by Paul Brooks

Sunday 5^th May was a very busy day in terms of road running, with scheduled races at the Farndon 10km (Inter County match), a Masters International 10km in Birmingham, and the Cardiff 5k, with the latter incorporating an Inter Area match, the Welsh Inter Region and National championships, all taking place on the same day. This made selecting North Wales teams very problematic, especially as so many of our regular team members are over 35. However, the Farndon race was cancelled in the week leading up to the event, due to the fields used by the organisers for the race h.q. gazebo, toilets and car parking being waterlogged. Despite this, as the runners chosen for the Cardiff event had been nominated months before the race date – at the behest of the race organisers – the Region had six runners at the start line (two late withdrawals through injury reduced our team and replacements were not possible, not only because of the Birmingham event, but the marathons in London and Manchester in the previous weeks had further limited our options). Our men’s team consisted of all Wrexham A.C. athletes. First home was Connor Rogers, 24^th in 15:09 (p.b.), followed by Ryan Davis, 30^th in 15:13 and Luke Northall, 61^st in 15:43. The ever-willing Darren Blazier (Abergele) had chauffeured two of the ladies’ team to the race and agreed to wear a Regional vest to ensure that if any our men pulled up and didn’t finish, we would still have a scoring side. He finished 315^th in 19:14.

 Our ladies team saw Rachel Shipley (Abergele) finish 257^th in 18:33, Amie Smith (Cheshire Dragons) place 287^th in 18:52 and Olivia Ashton (Deeside) given the same time (p.b.) as Amie in 288^th spot. Photo L to R: Olivia Ashton, Darren Blazier, Rachel Shipley, Amie Smith and Connor Rogers.

To put our results into context, 1,664 runners finished the race.

Paul Brooks