Connie Lewis had the race of her life to win the Girls 11-12 age group at the London Mini-Marathon. Clocking an impressive 17.51 for the three mile course, the twelve year old was always in the hunt and eventually just ran out of challengers as she won by seven seconds from South East team-mate Katie Shiel-Rankin.
A delighted Connie was lucky to be randomly selected to start in the first row at the start line but kept her pace steady as more inexperienced runners charged off. After a kilometre Connie was in the leading group, and by a kilometre to go she was comfortable and held off one or two challenges to come home victorious.
There were 55 runners in the Regional Challenge (where the South East team were easy winners) and 234 in the London Challenge so Connie headed a large and good-quality field.
In the 11-12 boys race Bill Hughes had a good run, also competing for the South East team, despite his persistently troublesome knee injury, but although finishing around 20th, lost his chip so doesn't feature in the official results.