University of York student Bobbi Phillips has won a silver medal after finishing 2nd in last week’s women’s 3000m at the BUCS Gatorade Nationals in Sheffield.
The indoor event brought together numerous BUCS sports which are not competed for in league format on Wednesday afternoons.
Amongst the participating sports was athletics, and Phillips was amongst York’s biggest hopes for the event, after finishing 6th last year. She did not disappoint, improving her position with a personal best of 9:44:37.
Phillips finished a little more than one second behind the race winner, Alaw Benyon from Cardiff University. She also edged out the 3rd and 4th place finishers by less than half a second in what was an incredibly tight finish.
Phillips’ previous personal best was also achieved this year, during the Northern Athletic Championships in January. On that occasion, Phillips ran 9:57:26, but improved that mark by nearly 13 seconds to achieve the silver medal in Sheffield.
A first-year medicine student, Phillips came to York as part of the York Sport Schoalrship Scheme, having previously studied at Newcastle University, whom she represented at last year’s competition.
As part of the scheme, Phillips has undertaken regular strength and conditioning training with Peter Ashcroft, the university’s strength and conditioning coach. She is also a member of York City Athletics Club.
Phillips told Vision: “I was really pleased with my result. Training has been going really well since I came to York and had been very much focussed on BUCS indoors, so I’d built up a lot of hopes for the race and knew I was going to be either really disappointed or really really pleased.
“It was a tough race and the pace kept picking up; the last 100 everyone was flat out. I thought I was going to come third and then the girl in fourth overtook me, so I went a bit faster and overtook the Loughborough athlete in 2nd!
“I ran 9.44 which is a big improvement on my last season’s PB of 10.18. Hopefully I can produce something at BUCS outdoors in May but the standard is so high so I’ll just have to see.”