THE Swindon Harriers pair of Fletcher Hart and Isaac Mould scorched to personal times on a great evening of racing at Watford on Wednesday.

Competing in race 14 – of a total of 16 boasting around 200 runners – Hart carved 5.40secs off his PB with a time of 4mins 05.47secs to finish fifth, chased hard to the line by clubmate Simon Dill, who was rewarded with a season’s best of 4:06.37.

Mould, who had travelled down to the meeting with his Loughborough University team-mates, went in Race 15 and dug in tenaciously to finish 12th in 4:05.63, slashing 4.13secs off his previous best.

“Fletcher had a brilliant run,” said Dill. “Isaac had a really solid run, hanging in there at the back of his group and also running a massive PB.”

Hart, who is a first year U20, came into the season with a PB of 4:14.91 from last year and quickly improved that to 4:10.87 at the Wiltshire Championships last month.

Matt Woodward went into the top race and produced another solid performance, finishing fifth in a good quality field with a time of 3:55.76.

Woodward has run quicker this season - 3:53.97 in the BMC Gold Standard meeting at Birmingham University - but clearly more is to come, and he goes again at the Midland Championships this weekend before returning to Birmingham next week for another BMC outing.

Last but not least, Ben McIntyre ran 4:22.45 for 14th place in Race 13.

“It was good to get a car of us going down from Swindon and it was a really good night,” added Dill.

In other news, sprinter Tye Leo-Stroud ran an impressive 11.59secs over 100m at the London Marathon Community Track, but the wind was just over the legal limit at 2.3mps so won’t count as a PB.

Elsewhere, teenager Al Virgilio is also celebrating a personal best outdoors as he clocked 2mins 04.5secs at the Oxon & Bucks Midweek Open.

That time puts Virgilio 19th in the UK Rankings and number one in the South West. Virgilio, who is coached by Kevin Buttle, ran 2:04.06 indoors in February and is surely poised to break that time soon.

In his first 5000m on the track, Jack Gunning clocked 16:31.3 at the BMC regional meeting at Eltham. Ben Lines (15:43.2) is the fastest Harrier on the track this season so far.