Tside » Teesside Athletes Do The Business!

Teesside Athletes Do The Business!

By Dominic Shaw Added 01.27pm, 10-March-09

IT was an excellent weekend for two of the University of Teesside’s middle distance runners as both ran nothing short of fantastic times.

Ricky Stevenson more than made up for not being entered into the national championships by winning the Snake Lane 10 mile race in Pocklington.

ricky-northens

To step up such a distance was unknown territory for Stevenson, but not only was his time of 48:47 a course record, it put him on top of the senior rankings for the distance in 2009.

“Training’s been going excellent”, said Stevenson. “We’ve been building up the hard work, volume, speed and gym work ready for the summer and its obviously starting to pay off.”

“I was tired throughout the race, but I had had a tough session the day before so I was obviously going to feel the fatigue.”

It was the latest high of another successful season for the Great Britain international.

After missing out on the European cross-country trials in November due to illness, Ricky, 20, won both the North Eastern and Northern championships with relative ease.

Steve Shaw, coach of Stevenson is extremely pleased with how things are going.

“Training’s been going absolutely fantastic, but to run as fast as that, bearing in mind he’s a miler, in his first attempt at the distance is unbelievable.”

“I saw Steve Cram run 48:10 at Brampton to Carlisle as a 21 year old, but he had the wind behind him the whole way there.”

The next target for Stevenson is to defend his BUC’s indoor title in Sheffield, before the first running of the elite man’s mile around the streets of Middlesbrough.

Meanwhile, Morpeth Harrier Jonny Taylor took a chunk off his 3000 metre PB to finish 6th at the Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham.

Taylor, 21, ran 7:58 to dip under the 8 minute barrier for the first time and take a massive 10 seconds off his personal best time which he had ran a week previous.

Taylor said: “I’m happy with my performance and time, but I still have a lot of improving to do.”