Hawick athlete Thomas MacAskill sets new record at Berwick Curfew Run

The 20-year-old last week beat the record of six minutes and five seconds for what has since been reduced by about 100m to a 1.28-mile course set by host club Tweed Striders’ Nathan Cox in 2015, also bettering the record of 6:24 for the new shorter course set by Exeter’s Simeon Bates in 2018.

MacAskill, now back in his home-town of Hawick after deciding a sports psychology and science degree course he started in the US last August wasn’t for him after all, clocked 6:02 last Wednesday evening, knocking three seconds off Cox’s record and 22 off Bates’s.

That record-breaking appearance in Northumberland was only a plan B, though, as he was supposed to be taking part in another event the other side of the border, his first 800m race of the season at a North East Grand Prix meeting in Jarrow in South Tyneside, but it was called off at short notice, forcing him to look elsewhere for a run-out.

“It’s pretty annoying that my race got cancelled but I’m happy to have run a course record,” said MacAskill.

“There was a tough hill about a mile in of around 100m but by that time, I already had quite a bit of momentum, and by the time I got to the top, I had only a few hundred yards left.

“I’m very pleased to have won and beat the record.

“I was quite nervous when there was a group of us running for the first mile, but I managed to find a little bit of daylight once we went up the hill and I kept pushing for the line and won by a good margin in the end.

“It was really good to break the record as it’s stood for some time.”

MacAskill, now being coached by Eyemouth’s Henry Gray, has already clocked a time of 4:11 over 1,500m this year and is hoping to break through the four-minute barrier by the end of the season.

Next up for him, after Saturday gone’s Jedburgh Border Games, is a Glasgow Athletics Association milers’ meet at the end of the month at the city’s Crownpoint Sports Complex and this year’s Scottish 1,500m championships at Grangemouth in August.

Runner-up at Berwick last week was Tyne Bridge Harriers’ Paul O’Mara in 6:23, with Gala Harriers 14-year-old Oliver Hastie third out of a field of 71 in 6:33.

More Jedburgh Border Games coverage on pages 45 to 47