Samantha Amend Gains GB Selection for Doha 50km
A stalwart of the road and cross country squad for Belgrave over the last 7 years Samantha ‘Sammi’ Amend has gone from strength to strength in her pursuit of distance running. For many years her training focus had been on the marathon chasing a target time of 2hrs 40min but despite good training the time "on the day" has so far alluded her. The desire to go longer started in 2012 after she ran the multi-stage Ridgeway event and beat the course record and most of the men to take 3rd place overall. This inspired her to run a lot of off road events to try and challenge herself beyond the marathon.
It was last year that Sammi decided to “have a go” and take on the new challenge of the Gower 50 to qualify for a Centurion race, despite having never run 100 miles or beyond 30 miles. This decision led to not only the securing of the course record on ‘Gower 50’ in October 2015, with an overall joint win with her partner Alex but also the ‘Country to Capital’ Ladies course record in January 2016. This was followed by the 100 miles with a course record of 16hrs 9 secs and first lady and all time second best time for the distance overall.
With such terrific results under her belt by mid-May this year there was discussion with the IAU selectors about Ultra GB qualification. Despite having missed the 100k and Trail qualifiers due to the TP100 and the marathon the selectors were persuaded by Sammi’s race experience and achievements and she was subsequently selected for the team in early June. Sammi is truly elated to be finally putting on a GB vest at the Doha 50k in November, it is something she has aspired to as a child and most definitely in the last 10 years of running. As Sammi claims “I always said to my coach I am a long distance runner, the short stuff hurts!!!”
British Athletics Article on 50km Team: http://www.britishathletics.org.uk/media/news/2016-news-page/june-2016/20-06-16-50km-team/