And the results are in.

Written by David Jones on 24/07/2025. Posted in News

Our army of volunteers who were the recipients of well deserved praise from the Warwickshire Team Manager following the recent ESAA Championships at Alexander Stadium.

A relatively quiet week by recent standards.

Pride of place goes to the above army of volunteers who helped make the recent ESAA Championships at Alexander Stadium, the 4th largest athletic event in the world, run so smoothly, with effusive and well deserved words of praise from Warwickshire team manager and MBE, Gwil Price.

There is an update on the results of two recent T&F fixtures featuring our teams, with a magnificent victory for our Midland League team and a 2nd place overall finish for our Vets.

We have a report on the welcome return of Maisie-Joy Spriggs, who despite a prolonged period of absence due to shoulder surgery, resulting in a distinct lack of training, managed to finish first in her age group in the Battersea Half Marathon. Well done MJ.

There are then a couple of notices regarding the upcoming XC season and another reminder of the club’s Image permission policy.

Finally there are the results of Wednesday night’s latest Tempo Midweek Series races.

Good luck to those of our juniors who are competing in this weekend’s Heart of England League fixture at Rugby and Northampton.

Take care.

David Jones

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Happy to be of service.

Buckets at the ready. A few of our volunteers being led by Danny Tolhurst and Lucy Edwards

“I am searching for words to say how wonderful you all were”.

Below are comments from Gwil Price MBE, the Warwickshire Team Manager at the recent English Schools Athletic Association Championships, paying tribute to our volunteer junior athletes, coaches and parents who helped the event, the 4th largest athletic event in the world, run smoothly

“Once again I am searching for words to say how wonderful you all were on. The huge amount of work you put into finding and organising volunteers from your very special SUAAC is impressive and so appreciated! Your athletes and parents always ‘stand out’ in every possible way in setting exemplary standards of organisation, efficiency and flexibility. I must also add a massive thanks to the Parents who assisted with directing athletes from the track to the Post Race Room where I had to spend 90% of my time …. unexpectedly of course!!

Your young athletes looked so smart in their tops – so noticeable when on ‘Parade Duty! Also it was lovely to see them in the front ranks behind the ‘Past Champions’.

Matt Wilcox from Birchfield was mightily impressed with the way you recruit young athletes and kit them out and so much so that he would like to do similar in future years!”

The Results Are In

A couple of recent T&F recent meets have once again shown the depth of talent we have in our club across a considerable age range.

Below are the results fro our recent Midland League T&F and Vets T&F fixtures

Some of the SuAAC contingent at the Coventry Godiva Track

There are victories, comfortable victories, convincing victories and then there is our Midland T&F team’s victory in the recent fixture at the Coventry Godiva track, as you will see from the final scores below.

SuAAC 569 points
Banbury Harriers 436
Solihull and Small Heath 422
Leicester Corinthians 408
Kettering Harriers 399
Coventry Godiva 341.5
Daventry AAC 214
Abingdon AC 165.5

Impressive or what ? It was also an event where young and the not so young members’ combined to do the club proud.

Reflections on our victory from Team Manager Mike Sheppard

Another fantastic team effort! The results are now in and they confirm another strong win for Team Stratford.

Congratulation to all athletes and officials who worked through the heat to make this possible.

So many strong performances despite the very demanding conditions including, remarkably, a fair smattering of PBs.

However, it’s a real shame that Adam Linforth’s name does not feature in the results. As many will know, he was absolutely storming the steeplechase – moving well clear with one lap to go – when a bad landing resulted in two broken metatarsals in his left foot, a visit to A&E and now an extended period of recovery complete with boot.

Bad luck indeed.

The next fixture will be upon us very quickly: Saturday 2 August at Banbury.

Another strong performance in that match will give us a great opportunity to secure promotion at the end of the season. I know many have already advised me of your anticipated availability, but if you could please all update spond with an acceptance or a decline it saves a lot of chasing around and wasted time.

Some of our team members and volunteer officials at the Bromsgrove and Redditch track.

Our ladies’ medley relay team.
L to R: Clare Goodwin, Donna Allen, Elaine Ledden and Sharon Masters.

Andy List on his way to victory in the M60 200m race.

Midland Vets T&F League

Midland Vets T&F League

A few days after our Midland League T&F team performed so magnificently, it was the turn of our Vets T&F team at the Bromsgrove and Redditch track, where and they managed to reduce the gap between our overall team score and that of the all conquering Worcester team to just 5 points.

The margin of Worcester’s victory in the 1st fixture was 69 points, this reducing to 31 in the second fixture and just 5 in this latest fixture.

Maybe next time

Welcome back MJ

Maisie-Joy Spriggs.

MJ with proud mom Hannah Osborne

Battersea Half Marathon

Report – Maisie-Joy Spriggs

On Sunday 20th July, I competed in the Battersea Half Marathon.

I went into the race with low expectations as this was my first proper race following a shoulder operation, I also had a lack of training, with my furthest run before the race being only 7 miles, just over half the distance of the race.

The weather looked to be wet and stormy but fortunately the majority of the path was under trees and therefore didn’t have much affect on the performance conditions.

Battersea Park Half Marathon is an 8.75 lap course, each lap being about 1.5 miles. Running so many laps around the same course may seem boring but it was surprisingly good, as I was able to constantly run with people around me and the atmosphere was even greater.

The race started at 10am but with our spare time before the race begun, me and my mum used our time wisely utilising the freebies being given out.

A total of 1296 people competed. I had told myself that I wanted to just complete the race in under 2 hours due to my lack of preparation but I finished in 1:44.39 and 1st in my age group under chip timing, even after having a pit stop to use the toilet.

I am very happy with my finish time and luckily, because I ran under 1 hour 45 my, brother treated me to a chocolate bar !

Cross Country !

Okay I realise we’re still in July but as your diaries get so crammed I though it worth making you aware of upcoming XC dates. You know, rain, sleet, snow, mud and hills. What’s not to like ?

Juniors XC

The junior league fixtures for 2025-26 are:

12/10/2025 – Birchfield, Walsall Arboretum
09/11/2025 – Tipton Harriers, Warley Woods (Remembrance Sunday)
07/12/2025 – Rugby and Northampton, Newbold Revell
11/01/2026 – TBC but likely to be Nuneaton
08/02/2026 – Wolverhampton & Bilston Athletics Club, Aldesley Stadium

As usual these are all Sundays

Senior XC

The latest info on the Men’s Birmingham League is as follows:

15 November at Newbold Comyn, with all divisions running together.
6 December at Cheltenham
10 January at Burton Dassett
7 February no venue yet

For the Women’s League, the December and January fixtures may be with our men and February may be at Bromsgrove & Redditch with the men’s Division 1.

Nothing is confirmed yet for the women’s league though

All dates and venues are subject to final confirmation.

SUAAC Image Permission

The club are in the process of updating our Comms strategy for all our public facing channels. Website, Instagram, Facebook, Newspapers etc.

A critical part of this is ensuring we have people’s permission to use their images, if required.

When you completed the registration process to join the Club, you will have selected your options but we have taken the decision that we should conduct an annual review, in case people’s circumstances change.

If you DO NOT wish for your image to be used as part of the Club’s public facing strategy, please email Carolyne Johnston for the juniors at juniormembership@suaac.co.uk or Robin Langhorn for seniors at seniormembership@suaac.co.uk

You will then be added to a group that the Executive have visibility of, thus ensuring your image is not used.

Tempo Events Midweek Race 3

The latest of these races, which unfortunately clash with the club’s social run, was held on Wednesday night, with some 150 runners completing the course.

The race was won by Joseph Read of BRAT in a time of 31:30 followed by our own Seb Wolsoncroft-Dodds in 2nd place in 32:31. Our other 3 leading male finishers were Kevin McFall (23rd – 40:28) and Andy Snape (36th – 43:59).

The first lady finisher was Lauren Cooper (11th – 37:17). Our first 3 lady finishers were Susie Ross (38th – 44:03), Emma Vickers (52nd – 46:08) and Susan Hunt (88th – 53:18). Emma was 1st in her age category.

For the full list runners shown as SuAAC members in the results please follow the link below:

https://www.racetecresults.com/results.aspx?CId=16418&RId=958&EId=1&dt=0&adv=1