Mark Hayes Mile

2024 Mark Hayes Mile

We held the 20th edition of our mile championships in memory of former champion Mark Hayes on Friday 12 July at the Dulwich College 300m track.

With a number of London track event organisers slavishly following world athletics shoe requirements or insisting on strict time limits we had decided to make this event the club championship event to make track running more inclusive. We were rewarded with 40 runners across 4 exciting races with numerous spectators in attendance. A massive thank you for the donations that saw us raise £265 for Cancer Research.

The first race saw two junior runners of club members run against an experienced field and a member of Blackheath and Bromley seeking a M75 club record. As in the next two races, Jack Ramm, Ed Gibson and Sean Cordon helped provide pacing at various speeds.

George Williams quickly set the pace ahead of chief pacer Jack. We weren’t sure if he had gone too quickly but easily stayed the course lapping a few runners in his winning time of 6:42.

Mike Mann fresh from some vets track races on Wednesday had a good battle with Jim Phelan of Blackheath before pulling away to secure second in 7:12. Further down the field Ameet Patel rewarded the crowd with his trademark final 50m sprint and there was a close finish between Claire Steward and Evie Farrington-Douglas.

Race 2 was extremely competitive with the ladies trophy on the line. Olivia Bishton initially led from the front before Grace Ingledew put in a burst of acceleration with two laps to go. Garry Meehan was able to match Grace’s attack and the two pushed each other to an identical 5:46 with Garry just having enough in the photo finish. Another close finish saw the fast finishing Maeve Lane (5:53) pip Olivia Bishton (5:54) to the line.

Race 3 was won by Warren Keefe in a hugely promising 5:19, just ahead of Mark Callaghan (5:21). With few previous track races Warren looks as if he can go quite a bit faster. The rest of the race was a good battle between a mix of ultra marathon runners and triathletes with some of them commenting after that a mile was harder than the longer distance events! As with the other races there were some good mini battles throughout the field with Rob Tokarski pipping Tom Mountain and Gower Tan just ahead of Ed Martin.

The final race saw defending champion Joe Farrington-Douglas up against some stiff competition. The group was relatively intact over the first two laps before Jack Ramm pushed the accelerator down, dragging only some of the field with him. Jack won in 4:35 with Ed Gibson (4:43) and Sean Cordon (4:44) picking up the podium places with an excellent performance from Murray Humphrey in 4:55. Meanwhile a strong tussle between four runners led out by Jonathan Whittaker for most of the race saw Tom McGing put in a blistering last lap to finish in 5:09 with Joe Farrington-Douglas (5:11) and Rob Mayes (5:11) having just too much in the tank to beat Jonathan (5:13).

Karine Brissey-Hayes and Barrie-John Nicholls presented the trophies to Grace Ingledew and Jack Ramm before we headed off to the Alleyn's Head for a few drinks to relive the races.

13301f3b-c147-43b7-8781-ff9393972cf2 (1).JPEG

671ffc3c-1894-4471-bb73-fa2d9ff17b70 (1).JPEG

2023 Mark Hayes Mile

The newly relaid 300 metre track played host to a series of great races with Harriet Roddy (6:00) and Joe Farrington-Douglas (5:09) the winners of the two trophies.

Race winner 1: James Gordon (6:35)

Race winner 2: Tom M (5:37) with Harriet Roddy second place (6:00)

Race winner 3: Joe Farrington-Douglas (5:09)

A video highlights package of the event can be found below.

2022 Mark Hayes Mile

At the end of May 2022 we held our last ever event on the old Dulwich College 300 metre track. Four races were held with the fastest the last race.

Winners were Raffi French (6:34.8 - race 1), Ed Smyth (6:00.7 - race 2), Oliver Newlan (5:30.6 - race 3) with Yvette Dore the fastest woman in 5:48.1. Race 4 saw Ed Chuck Ed blast his way around five and a bit laps for an unofficial PB and also smashed the race record by 10 seconds! Highlights from races 3 and 4 are on YouTube below.

2021 Mark Hayes Mile

At the end of June we held our annual series of mile races at the Dulwich College track to honour our former mile champion from the 1990s - Mark Hayes. The club is enjoying record levels of membership at all levels of ability, with this reflected in 52 runners across 6 races. Winners of the first five races included Jenny Bomers in 7:08, James Rimmer in 6:19, Rob Meadows in 5:56, Michael Nogas in 5:35 and Lloyd Collier in 5:18.

The final race decided the men’s and ladies’ champions. After a relatively slow start, Jack Ramm and Ben Howe upped the tempo as the laps ticked by, with Jack’s strong kick in the last 100 metres enabling him to win by 3 seconds in a new club championship best time of 4:36. Kay Sheedy ran a relatively even pace to record a new personal best in 5:17, taking 57 seconds off her time from the 2019 event.

Highlights from the final race 6 are below via YouTube.