On a firm, undulating course the team finished in 6th spot, an improvement from our 7th position at Claybury. There were some notable individual performances including Jack Whitebury, leading the team home in 59th position followed closely by Micheal O’Sullivan in 66th place. Joe Tarling, the youngest member of the squad, made his Met League debut at Senior level and finished an extremely promising 76th – one to watch over the coming months.
Club Captain, Jim Cooper was second M50 in 115th place. In 158th place Mark Cursons again won the M60 category and takes his good form to the international cross country event in Belfast next week where he will represent England Masters. Making his debut for the Club, we welcomed second claimer, Marcus Brown, who was our 10th scorer in 175th.
In the Masters category the team finished 4th,up from our 7th position at Claybury with coach Mike Lepps finishing second in the v65 category.
In the combined U17/15s boys race, Charlie Robert led the charge home with close support from Blake Mitchell and Dominic Frearson. In the girls equivalent race, Beth Dalton had the standout performance as she finished 12th with Sian Wright, Annabelle Suffield and Nilou Heath all in close support. For the u13 girls, the squad continues to perform well as Soufia Atek finished 13th with Vivienne and Ottilie close behind in 25 & 26th position.
For the senior women, Claire Bentley continued her resurgent form from the previous week at Kingsbury and led the senior womens team home again in a highly competitive race as she finished 43rd. Emily Antcliffe also closed strongly in 48th with Issy Jones 70th and a return from recently married Jo Finill in 84th position who’s 1 year old son was also on the course supporting the teams!
Thanks to support from Chris (the Tunnocks wafer king), Julia and Tony plus all the very welcome and vocal parents from the earlier races 🙂
For anyone who may be interested in helping the Club (and specifically the Met League) we are being asked to ensure that we provide volunteers to help either in the race finish zone or marshal the courses. If you would like to support the Club in either capacity then please reach out to Tom Morris, our officials manager, or head coach Mike Lepps if you don’t know Tom yet.
The Kingsbury course was much better for the athletes compared to last years flooded conditions but still proved to be demanding with a long hill to negotiate going out on each large lap. Very nice to see Claire and Henry returning to competition after some time out. The results will come through in a few days but our senior mens 8 to score did win third place and came home with a nice set of medals! Photos below and results here.
Senior mens report: The senior team kicked off their cross country season with round 1 of the Met League held at Claybury. Seventeen ran in the men’s team in good conditions with the main challenge being the steep up and down section in the woods. It’s a little nerve racking burning out your legs going up to then have to go straight back down!
The team were led home by the rapid Daniel Titcomb in 29th. Jack Whitebury in 66th enjoyed a run without a buggy and was closely followed by young Zack Atek who was also 7th in the U20s. Captain Jim Cooper came home in 108th and 3rd in the V50s followed by 800m specialist Joshua Poncia in 121st and then V60 first placed Mark Cursons in 123rd. Chris Jones followed in 130th and Simon Sly made it a 3rd family completion of the day in 180th.
Met league debutant John Corcoran ran well for 196th before heading off to top up the calories at a chocolate show in London. Chris Finill also won his V65 age group in 202nd, Rob Hawkes (244th), debutant Daniel Clark (264th) and Nick Andrews (271st) pulled one another around for decent runs.
Jabbil Chibwana was next in 320th with Nick Jones 349th (4th v65), Martin Aslan 368th and Tom Morris bringing the team home in 382nd. Some of us retreated to the Woodford club bar for a well-deserved beer or coffee with the women’s team who we did appreciate encouraging us on our runs. All in all it was an enjoyable first round which left us in 8th place in division 1 (of 15 teams).
The venue for round 2 on 9th November is closer to home at Horsenden Hill which hopefully will see a few more of our athletes across all ages in action!
Michael Cattini stormed to victory as he won the Middlesex County 10Km title this morning at Victoria Park in a swift 31:24! Jack Whitebury (34:04) and Tejus Hirani also ran strongly (35.26) – not sure if there were team titles at stake but well done all!
Also featuring well at the Ealing Half Marathon today, was Terry Mackin who ran 79:25 for the 13.1 miles and this a week after winning the tough Moor Park 10Km in a shade under 38 minutes. Issy Jones had great run to finish in 92:21 with dad Nick not far behind in 1:42:05. Tim Allman ran 1:43:43, Graham’s time is unknown and Bruno was pacing at the 2:20 mark!
Saturday was the turn of the younger athletes in the seasons opening NWLL fixture held at Horsenden Hill – thankfully dryer and warmer conditions greeted the athletes after the challenges of the previous week and Thursday! Results just posted.
Very warm weather greeted the senior teams for the afternoon road relay races at Aldershot yesterday although I think our junior athletes had somewhat wetter conditions to cope with in the morning.
Our senior mens team was somewhat weaker than last year but we did field a masters V60 team which placed 5th in a time which would have won last years event! Mark Cursons ran the overall quickest v60 time of the day by 2 seconds so hopefully a medal will eventually arrive in the post.
In the junior races we fielded a U17 womens team of Amae, Sian and Annabelle who placed 20th and a foundation to build upon for the balance of the winter season 😉
In the U17 mens race Luca and Samuel were short of a runner to complete their team so hopefully we can improve there and well done Luca for being just 10s adrift of his excellent track 3Km time with 9:55.
We had 2 teams in the U15 girls with some strong performances resulting in positions of 21st and 39th – well done Katie, Beth, Nilou, Grace, Millie and Lara!
Thanks to Nick, Louise, Hazel and Issy for their support and helping with the photography!
