In his first Met League appearance for the Club, steeplechase specialist, Thomas Dugre ran brilliantly and came home in a really impressive 4th place. OCR specialist, Dan Titcomb put in a predictably decent performance in 51st and this augers well for his OCR Championship aspirations later in the year.
Next home, was Dave Branfoot, returning from a posting in Cyprus and competing for the first time in several years. An extremely welcome addition to strengthen the squad, he came home comfortably within the first 100 and was well supported by Club Captain, Jim Cooper.
Rhys Rowland has also just joined the squad running well for 140th just pipping Adam Towle, a second behind. Mark Cursons, fresh from his Home International Team gold medal for England in the UK Masters Championships, came 159th thus continuing his run of good form
Bouncing back well from injury Declan Traynor was also welcomed back slightly ahead of Fergal Keaney who finished 194th. Simon Sly returned well from Christmas illness for 204th and Henry Jakszta continues to improve as the season marches on.
A cluster of close finishes followed with Daniel Draper, Daniel Clark and Rob Hawkes all finishing within 8 seconds of one another, Chris Finill finished 272nd Richard Tarling dipped under 300 to close the squad of 16 runners.
In the Veteran ranks, Dave Branfoot was 3rd V45 and Jim Cooper was 2nd V50.
Mark Cursons and Chris Finill won the V60 and V65 competitions respectively.
The Team finished 7th A Team in Division one with Highgate continuing to pull away from other Clubs in the season’s battle for first place honours.
For the women’s team and showing just how strong the Met League competition is, our first scorer was Eilish O’Grady in 18th place having finished 6th at the County champs only a week earlier. National League squad member Catherine O’Connor was next home in 24th place.
Emily Antcliffe was 3rd scorer in 27th and currently enjoying a purple patch of good form as she demonstrated by also taking 3rd female in the rescheduled Hyde Park 10Km the following morning in a sprightly 40:19!
Issy Jones was next home in 46th position just ahead of a welcome return from Federica De Caria in 50th just seconds ahead of Jo Finill in 53rd. Jen Keal was 97th and nice to see Kelly Katie Watkins out again in 100th with Renata Olas finishing 131st.
The senior A team placed an excellent 6th on the day in division 1 with the B team taking 1st place in division 3 – well done to all the runners.
In the junior races Charlie Robert led home the boys team in 40th place and Amae Van Zyl was an impressive 7th for the girls with Beth and Katie Dalton also running consistently well to take finish 12 & 13th. In the u13 girls, Vivienne Olas was first home of the trio in 19th position.
A very cold day for the athletes competing at Trent Park at the combined Middx and Herts CC championships. Congrats to Joseph, Luca and Zac for their third place team medals and very well done to Louise Bruce who finished second in the U11 boys race as he also led the team to third place medals! Amae Van Zyl was fifth in the U17 womens race as was Luca Russo in U15 boys and a strong sixth place for Eilish O’Grady in the senior womens race.
The results are now posted here although detailed team scores are not showing in the official results yet. Further match reports to follow and below are Mikes photos from the event.
Junior Men
Well supported by Zack Atek, Luca Matharu and Joe Tarling battled it out for first Harrow athlete honours with Luca moving away in the latter stages up the long drag to the finish. In this Junior Men’s race we suspected beforehand that we had a team capable of a podium finish and we were not disappointed. Highgate and Shaftesbury took gold and silver with Harrow securing bronze team medals.
Senior Men
There were some notable performances. Damian Nevins again demonstrated his outstanding commitment to the Club by travelling all the way from Sweden for this fixture. This is the sort of effort that we should all really respect next time we think journeying 20 miles to a fixture is a big deal!
In a race packed with quality he was justly rewarded with 5th place. Jack Whitebury, Micheal O’Sullivan and Tejas Hirani clustered well, all finishing within a minute of one another.
Jim Cooper put in his solid shift and a little way behind, Daniel Draper made a very welcome return to the club after a 15 gap since his last cross country appearance for the Club. Newcomer, Henry Jakszta and the more established Richard Tarling continued to improve and both clearly enjoyed the heavy going. Martin Aslan and Jabil Chibwana closed the team with steady runs in challenging conditions.
Teamwise this was a disappointing result and a series of understandable but late withdrawals hurt us. Consequently. we couldn’t place in the first three and, unfortunately, only finished 11 runners in the 12 to score contest.
Thank you to Mike Lepps, Mark Cursons and Declan Trainor for their on course support and to Jim Cooper for coordinating entries and dishing out numbers on the day.
The Squad now looks forward to its next fixture – Race 4 of the Met League series at Welwyn on 11th January.
It’s been a quiet couple of weeks since the last Met League race reported on below but some of our athletes have been busy searching out racing opportunities. First off was the Telford 10Km race on Sunday, last week, with 4 Harrow athletes racing including new recruit Chris Davies, whose chip time was 31:16. Well done Chris and thanks for making such an impact on our Tuesday night training sessions in Harrow!
Next home for Harrow was Daniel Titcombe in 31:26 with Michael Cattini in close pursuit with 31:42. To complete the quartet was Chris Hudson, returning from a lengthy injury but now rediscovering hard interval training sessions at uni and clocking a not to be sniffed at 31:55 😉
Chris H. was in action again last Friday, this time at Battersea Park in the 5 mile event and recorded 25:20.
Harrow athletes were in action at Uxbridge today for the third round Met League fixture tackling the notorious course featuring the ski slope and for the senior men and women, the water splash through the stream! Whilst the results are being pulled together by the league organisers, below are my photos to remind you of the agony or was that ecstasy of your race performance 😉
Senior men’s report:
Twenty senior men took on the stream and ski slope at Uxbridge in the Met league round 3 in warm but gloopy winter conditions. After the race the A team are in 8th position out of 15 in division 1 and the B team 12 of 15 in division 2 as we didn’t quite field a full B team. Harry Lupton led the team home in an excellent 19th place followed by Kevin Fini with his first race of the season in 34th. Jack Whitebury ran well again for 51st with Tejas Hirani close behind in 64th. Captain Jim Copper was 3rd vet 50 in 85th – well done Jim. Fergal Keany (140th) , Adam Towle (167th) and John Bignall (200th and 4th in his age) came next. Marcus Brown (210th) , John Corcoran (214th), Simon Sly (225th) and Chris Finill (237th) were all within about a minute of one another to wrap up the A team.
Henry Jakszta headed the B team, taking a lot of places in the second half of the race in 245th. Andy Hoiles was 3rd in his age and 250th overall with an excellent run. Richard Tarling (287th) showed his strength passing Nick Andrews (298th) on the hill on lap 2. Nick ignored his own advice on spikes with a tumble on a muddy corner nearly taking out Graeme Jones who was close behind in 301st. Rob Hawkes followed Graeme in 302nd with Graeme Barlow 314th and regular Tom Morris in 394th finishing off the team. Well done to everyone on surviving the stream and hill for another year!
Senior women:
For the senior womens team, there was a welcome return from Eilish O’Grady, who placed 14th as first scorer. Finishing in 35th place was Emily Antcliffe, continuing her current great form and next home was Jo Finill, a strong 65th. Disappointment for Issy Jones who was forced to withdraw on the second lap following a fall but good to see her back training tonight at Bannisters! Jen Keal was 89th, having run an easy parkrun in the morning and on Sunday went on to race another muddy cross country course at Cirencester in the Oxford League. Sarah Saunders, 101st and Renata Olas, 120th completed the scoring six for the A team as they placed 11th team in Div 1.
For the U15 girls race, great results for Beth and Katie Dalton as they finished 12 & 14th respectively with Nilou 33rd ad Grace 37th. In the U13 girls there was an excellent 7th place finish for Soufia Atek.
Congrats to Mark Cursons who was selected for the British & Irish masters cross country international fixture in Belfast and ran superbly to come home third scorer for England who won the team title! England were far and away the clear team winners – shame our rugby team can’t emulate them!
Closer to home yesterday at Parliament Hill, the home of British cross country racing, Daniel Titcombe led home the small Harrow team to finish 25th in the London Cross Country championships.
The junior athletes were also in action with strong runs from Luca Russo, 12th in the U15 boys, with Blake Mitchell finishing 14th. For the girls, Beth Dalton was 55th with Nilou Heath within 10 seconds and placing 64th. Well done to all our athletes!
Jack Whitebury is preparing well for the next Met League – here he is below pushing Gus in the buggy at Harrow parkrun in a swift 18:46 – I’d be happy with that sans buggy! 😉
