Race Date: Wednesday 13th December 2017

This indoor athletics event was down at the English Institute of Sport as part one of a three part Run, Jump, Throw series organised by City of Sheffield & Dearne Athletics.

Parts two and three at the same venue are Wednesday 24th January and Tuesday 6th February and both can be entered via the Race Results website.

For those interested in further local track meeting in the coming months there is also the Sheffield Festival of Athletics at EIS on Sunday 28th January and a bit further afield, 6 indoor track meetings on Sundays at Sport City Manchester throughout the winter.

Back to last Wednesday: The weather was foul outside with ice, sleet and driving winds.  But the beauty of an indoor meet is just that, its indoor.  Perfect on a night where the weather outside is foul.

Add to the positives that it was as cheap as chips to enter too, just £6 for your first event and then £2.50 for each subsequent event.  Plus all the races were electronically timed.

Events on offer covered a wide variety of track and field from 60m to 3000m on the track, to shot put and pole vault in field.  And this was an open age event, so right from U11, up to seniors and in some of our cases, beyond senior.

But despite the above combination being seemingly a no brainer to come down and compete, only 3 Striders made the trip; Ben Jones, Mick Wall and Ari Hodgson.

First up I continued with my attempt at reinventing myself as sprinter, this time with a debut in the 60m dash.

The heats were grouped by PB, so not having ever ran the distance before I was in the third and final heat.  I asked some young lad how old he was, he said 14 and that he was worried about running against some 20 year olds.  I told him not to worry as I was 45 and was also worried about the 20 year olds too.

Think I got out the blocks ok and felt good. The whole thing was over in a flash and being in lane one I looked over to my right to see only a couple of people in front of me.