Day 1 of the Hampshire Championships comes to a close, both Robbie and I have dipped our hands in to the “Officials” role today, along with Robbie’s outing in the 3000m. After coming second last year to Jack Boswell, and with Jack now running in the age group above Robbie was expecting to have an easy win today, that thought direction changed though once we saw the field of runners competing, with a number of XC rivals stepping up to the 3000m track challenge too. The plan? Go as fast as possible and try to burn out the opposition, a plan that worked exceptionally well, Zac Mahamed stuck to Robbie like glue for the first 3 laps, making a push to take the lead in the fourth, his 1st place lasted roughly 200m before Robbie took the mantle up again and started to pull away within a lap the gap was growing substantially and the supporters on the sidelines could see a win in the offing. Despite a fairly obvious kick in speed at the bell from Zac, Robbie continued to maintain the gap between them, eventually winning the championship 3000m in 9’29.49″ less than 4 seconds of the Championship record.
Hampshire 3000m Champion 2014
This is Robbie’s first time as a County Champion, so a very pleased, if very tired young Coupland returned to Fleet. Just time to rest up for tomorrow’s 1500m heats and race. Well done Robbie!