Hastings Half Marathon inc. AAA, SEAA & Inter-County Champs, Hastings

"I'm happy with that," said Erwin McRae when he consulted his watch at the end of the race. And so he should have been. Hastings is a tough, tough course with a severe hill after a couple of miles and a two-mile slog into the wind along the seafront to finish. Erwin has a sub-30 10k, a 2:22 marathon and a 66-odd half on his athletic CV so he's a good man to have in the mix when the relays come around.

We just had enough fire power to be in with a chance of retaining our AAA team title but Medway & Maidstone turned out a strong squad and although we got our last scoring man home ahead of theirs, the Kent club's first man, Michael Coleman, took too much time out of us. Our record in the AAA Half Marathon Team race now reads gold-silver-gold-silver in the last four years.

One might have expected the Bels to have picked up silver in the SEAA race, held in conjunction, but there, we later found, it was four to score and Hastings and Thanet got into the frame ahead of us.

1 F Mogaka (Kenya) 1:04:10; 10 E McRae 1:10:23; 16 H Raidi 1:11:49; 17 W Cockerell 1:11:56; 450 P Cross M45 1:35:25; 1003 E Asiedu M40 1:46:22; 1275 D McMillan M50 1:50:32; 3554 finished.

AAA Championship: 1 Medway & Maidstone AC; 2 Belgrave H
SEAA Championship: 1 Medway & Maidstone AC; 2 Hastings AC; 3 Thanet; 4 Belgrave H ?
CAU Inter-Counties Championship: 1 Surrey; 2 Kent; 3 Sussex
Surrey Championship: 1 A Weir (Thames H&H); 2 P Doyle (Ranelagh); 3 W Cockerell (Belgrave).

Restored from the club's earlier website, belgraveharriers.com, and published here as originally written.