The above Championships have grown in popularity every year and this year was no exception with record fields, and the club being represented in a number of the age group races as outlined below.
In the U/13 Boys we only had one representative, David Race who has shown steady improvement in early season races and came home in 11th position on his leg and with 80 teams taking part, this was a tremendous effort by him and surely augers well for the season ahead.
Grace Varley was also the sole U/15 athlete to travel but like David she competed well in a very strong age group finishing in 52nd position, again the turnout was huge with over a 100 teams starting.
The U/17 Womens team consisting of Isobel Chaudhry, Elisha Tate and Jessica Leslie battled on well to finish in the top half of the field in 30th position all gaining valuable experience for future races.
It was good to see that the club was represented by two U/20 Mens teams, which we hope augers well for our future Senior teams, the “A” Team, with James Cripwell, Jed Marshall and Callum Simpson (running in that order) were a very creditable 27th position, this is a very competitive age group so really good effort. The “B” Team were all first year Junior Men and this race would be valuable experience for the future, the athletes being Joe Kirk, Ewan Waite and Tom Mount.
There were 150 teams on the line in the Senior Womens race so a little bit competitive but our ladies team of Mary Ferrier, Sophie Wickham and Sarah Hill, stuck to there task and finished a very creditable 32nd which was also 12th Northern team to finish.
As always the last race was the Senior Mens and here we had 190 teams on the start line, the lads on the day performed really well with Lewis Moses on the lead leg, working his way through the field to hand over to Ross Murray who maintained the pressure by clawing back another 4 places to give Simeon Greenwood on leg 3 plenty to work around, he ran a real solid leg, handing over to Kevin Connelly(coming into the team at the last minute) who ran great bringing the team home in 25th position, which was 8th Northern finisher.
This was really good experience for our younger athletes and hopefully we can get athletes in all races next year.
John Stephenson (Endurance Team)
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