Witney Roadrunner Mathew Ashton smashed his personal best for 300 metres when taking the bronze medal in the South of England's Under 17 Championships held at the New River Stadium, Haringey.
Running his first race over the distance for more than 12 months, he knocked a massive 46 seconds off his personal best time, finishing with a time of 7.54.9 which is a grade 1 national standard - and more than nine seconds inside the qualifying time for the English Schools' Championships to be held in Exeter on July 6 and 7.
Matthew Ashton
On a breezy, cool afternoon, Ashton settled in the middle of the pack of 17 runners early on. He gradually and made his way into fourth position which he held at the bell reached in 6mins 49secs.
Ashton was still in fourth position with 200m to go but found an incredible turn of speed up the finishing straight to snatch third and the bronze medal.
*Witney's junior s produced another spate of club records and personal bests at the second Oxfordshire Junior League meeting held at Horspath.
In the under 11 match, Darren Mason and Adam Maskery won four events between them. Maskery took the 150m in 24.0 secs and threw the cricket ball 32.21 metres to take first place in the B string.
Clubmate Mason came close to setting a new league record when winning the A cricket ball event with a new personal best of 40.45m.
Matthew Sissons and David Ridley both set personal bests in the under 13 boys' 800m when recording times of 2.40.0 and 2.40.4 respectively. Ridley's time was also good enough to win the B string race.
Giray Ketenci equalled the under 17 200m club record when coming second in 24.6.
Two under 15 girls' club records were broken with Claire McLoughlin, running 13.5 for the 100m when taking second place and Elysia Ridley crossing the line in 2.20.2 for third in the 800m
*Witney coach Charlie Batts competed at the South Western Region Veterans Championship at Exeter. He won the over 40 long jump title with a leap of 5.38m and took the runners-up spots in both the triple jump and 200m with 11.09m and 25.8m respectively.
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