CONTESTING the senior indoor British athletics’ championships at the English Institute for Sport in Sheffield, 17 year-old Jake Ness, inset, from City of Salisbury running club was up against the finest 400m runners in the country.

With three fully fledged internationals in his heat, he had to give best to their greater age and experience.

But he certainly didn’t come away empty-handed: he set a new indoor 400m personal best with a speedy time of 49.24secs. That takes him to second spot in the UK rankings for the under-20 age group, a superb achievement given that he has another two years’ potential improvement ahead of him while he is still in the same category.

Next weekend sees the indoor age group championship at the same venue in Yorkshire where Ness, again in his favourite 400m event, will return to face up against competitors closer to his own age.

Not that he is short of recent travel. Last month he flew into New Mexico as special guest of the University of Albuquerque where he has been offered a five-year athletics’ scholarship starting in the summer, and a few days later he competed in Bratislava at an athletics’ meet for future Olympic hopefuls.

There he ran an indoor 50.9secs, only slightly slower than he might have hoped and he gained another piece of useful racing experience in the process.

At the opposite end of the country, Salisbury’s Chris Southern showed at the Bramley 20mile road race that he is really back in the groove with a fine personal best of 1hour 57min 15sec.

Liz Roberts finished agonisingly close to her best at the distance too, her 3.02.06 just three seconds per mile slower than her pb.

Over the ten mile course, Ali Theobald did well to clock 91min 33sec, setting her up for a good season to come.