BLACKBURN Harriers took an impressive 17 teams young and old to the Northern Athletics Road Relays.

Six senior squads and 11 junior from under-13s through to U17 made up the contingent at Sportcity, adjacent to Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium.

The senior men’s race had the highest number of teams on the day, featuring 106 in total.

The Harriers teams finished in 15th, 44th and 75th respectively and with a last minute withdrawal had to run a part number fourth team of five runners.

The A Team included Tim Raynes (20.28), Ben Costello (21.19), Chris Davies (22.26), Marc Hartley (22.21), Karl Billington (21.41) and Ben Fish (20.37) with their 15th placed finish seeing them secure an automatic place in the National Road Relays on October 6 at Sutton Coldfield.

The B team of Tom Marchant (23.42), Paul Bradshaw (22.40), Joe Gebbie (24.03), Dominic Walton (23.11), Calum Holmes (23.29) and Tom Blaney (22.55) was 44th.

The Harriers C Team came home in 75th position with Nick Smith (24.34), Dan Balshaw (25.03), Joe Howe (24.25), brother Zac Howe (24.530, Ben Makin (24.54) and Matthew Poole (24.41) making up that squad.

The D team of five due to a late withdrawal was Danny Maynard (25.10), Paul Guinan (24.41), John Cookson (27.38), John Chaplin (26.31) and Evan Cook (30.14).

Sixty teams contested the senior women’s race which saw the A team come home in 10th spot led by Alison Lundy (21.57).

She was backed up by Rachael Gavin (25.20), Maddie Elliott (24.20) and Joanne Nelson (22.59).

Hannah Cookson (26.39) ran the fastest time for the B team, with Lindsay Davies (28.05), Charlotte Atkinson (27.29) and Ellen Sagar-Hesketh (26.49) also in action.

The run of the day came from Matt Ramsden in the U17 men’s race, winning the opening leg with the second fastest time of the day as his squad came home in seventh overall. The under 17 women came 14th with Eleesha Charnley (14.34) pulling back 11 places with her run.

The Harriers had two teams in the U15 boys’ race, the A team in 16th and the B team in 21st.

The U15 girls also fielded two teams, Kate Cookson leading the way with a time of 14.12.

Blackburn came home in 22nd and 40th positions in the U13 girls, the stand out performance coming from Imogen Robinson (14.39) on the first leg for the A team.

As for the U13 boys, the two teams finished in 16th and 30th, Ben Ham (13.07) the quickest in that age group.