SOUTHEND High School for Boys and Girls have worked together to become the second fastest athletics team in the world.

Year 8 pupils from both schools combined to take part in the World Marathon Challenge at Lee Valley’s indoor track.

And Southend’s 31 runners, who took it in turns to run legs of 200m, were able to record a time of 1 hour, 56 minutes and 57 seconds to make them the fastest team in the Europe and the second fastest in the world.

“It was good to combine the two schools, Southend Boys and Southend Girls in a competitive situation,” said the girls’ head of PE Sue Simpson.

“Both sets of runners were excellent, maintaining a high intensity of race speed for over one hour 50 minutes and concentrating for the whole duration of the race, with excellent change overs every 200m.”

The boys’ head of PE Stephen Thomas was also thrilled by the achievement.

“It was great to have the girls and boys combined in an event that shows the running strength of both schools is at a national level of performance,” said Thomas.

Only Nderu Uhai school from Kenya with 1.51.52 are ahead of the Southend in the rankings.

Schools from New Zealand, France, China, Mexico, Canada, Tibet, Ireland, Norway and Spain have also taken part.

In 2010, 14 teams competed at nine different venues in four different countries with the eventual winners being the Spanish team from Castellon.

Teams at each venue raced simultaneously with their progress tracked on the race website so they knew how they are doing against the other teams as they all attempted to finish inside the world record for the marathon.