Harriers end the Yeovilton series on a high

Wednesday 12th September saw the final round of the summer Yeovilton 5k series taking place, with 2 Harriers and a Harrier guest lining up alongside a 150 strong field.

Billed as being slightly faster than the Exeter course, some Harriers feel that it is worth the extra miles to head up to Yeovil to earn those precious extra seconds on their seasons best times. 

For Harriers' Ethiopian guest star, Berihu Tesfay, this was a chance to improve upon his already impressive time of 14:57 set the previous week at the Run Exe 5k. With some stiffer competition on the Yeovilton course he was pushed harder from the gun to run a more competitive race and this saw him run to victory in a superb time of 14:46. Well worth the journey up the A303 then!

Berihu is staying with long time Harriers' stalwart, Cathy Newman, whilst he is in the UK. A fine runner herself, being a former UK international, Cathy is looking to get some form back now she is back in the UK full time after a 2 year spell working out in Ethiopia. She set a bench mark time of just over 19 minutes at the August round of the Run Exe series and was able to improve upon that considerably at Yeovilton and run herself into 2nd spot, behind another UK international, Kate Reed, and clock a time of 18:42. To give you an idea of the strength of this performance, it equates to 88% on age-graded time (incidentally, so does Berihu's time - talk about evenly matched!), just 1% behind the winning female, Kate Reed's, 16:05 clocking. 

The final Harrier running on the night was super-vet, Roger Rowe. Always a fan of fast, PB courses, Roger often makes the trip North to take part in the Yeovilton series. On this occasion he managed to post a season's best time for the distance of 20:52, bringing him in at 81% age-graded and 1st MV65.

The question is.... what will Berihu try his hand at next?!