New season success for Race Walking squad

Race walkers at Leeds have opened the new season in style, recording strong performances in their first race outing of 2010.

The Carnegie race walking squad travelled to Victoria Park, East London for the London Open Walks and South of England Championships for the 10 kilometre race and Leeds Met athletes finished in first and second place.

Despite training in recent weeks being hampered by the snow and ice both Brendan Boyce and Tom Bosworth recorded new personal bests over 10 kilometres.  Brendan took the race in a new personal best of 42.44 ahead of Tom Bosworth who removed nearly a minute and a half from his previous best, clocking 43.55 in taking the South of England title in the process.

Carnegie were denied a 1,2,3 by the judges with Alex Wright being removed by the judges in the final stages whilst holding 2nd place. Brendan, Tom and Alex will next be competing in the Irish Indoor Championships in Belfast on Saturday over 5 kilometres.

Carnegie Director of Race Walking Dr Andi Drake spoke of the squad's success following the event: "I'm delighted with the level of performance. I challenged the athletes to get to this level in 2010 as a building block for developing as 20 km athletes (their likely target event in 2012) and here they are achieving it in January off base training with no taper - they all completed their biggest week of training for the winter so far, including two sessions on the day preceding the race. The personal best times simply reflect their training form, not race form - I'm looking for big progression when they taper for events in March and April, backed up by consistency."