Saturday saw another good turnout for the Men’s Cross-country at Roundshaw Downs on Saturday. 12 of the 19 who ran at Lightwater turned up for more punishment and we were boosted by first of the season appearances by Rob Hinton, Oliver Webb, Alasdair Reisner and a certain Dave Wilson making his first cross-country appearance for three seasons. The weather was perfect for running but we were warned that certain of patches of the course were extremely muddy and so it proved. Those without appropriate footwear really found it difficult and I was even slipping around in my spikes. According to our Captain, Grant looked like bambi on ice in his road shoes!
It was great to have two competitors in the Junior race, James Hinton and Michael Stone representing the club. Both performed well against strong opposition.
In the Senior race Jim Ley again led the way, finishing 1st for the club and 5th place overall. He was hotly pursed by John Matthews with Declan Flynn, James Thurston and Rob Hinton not far behind. David Pimm ran a very strong race, cruising past me at the end of the first lap to finish 6th. Steve was not happy with his performance but scored important points for the club. I finished 8th followed by Alasdair Reisner making his first cross-country appearance for the club and who would have finished ahead of me if he had more grip. Moustafa completed the scoring, running a very sensibly paced race bearing in mind he was doing the Ballbuster the following morning. Dave Wilson, thoroughly enjoyed his run finishing in 11th place. He later commented that this was the first time he had not scored at cross-country. The rest of the 26.2 team of Ricky Emery, Grant Davison, Kevin Stone, David Pearce and Oliver Webb finished in fairly close order after that.
It was a strong performance by all and meant that the club finished in first place for the second fixture in a row and now leads the table by 220.5 points. That’s a great position to be in at the halfway stage of the season. Full results are in the Downloads section of the website.
Ann was in Belfast competing in a cross-country match for Scotland (where she helped her team to 3rd place) but had still found time to provide tea and cakes, ably served up by Lizzie Wilson. Thanks also to Natalie Warren for providing some of her birthday cake and Janneke, baby Alice and Ollie Davison for providing additional support.
As usual we met up in the evening at the New Prince for after race drinks where we were joined by Libby Marchant, Alice Tozer, Danny Norman and Joe Chang.
Next Men’s race is on 12th January at Cranford but don’t forget we need as many men as possible to help out at the woman’s race on 1st December which we are hosting at Nonsuch. Please let Ann or myself know if you are available.