Christmas Cracker at Beckenham!
Posted by on 19 December 2016
In the past the club has struggled to put out teams in this event, given that everyone is very busy on the final Saturday before Christmas with social and family engagements (and yes for some Christmas Shopping!) Throw into the mix the usual illness and injury issues at this time of the year and add in the fairly long journey to Beckenham, to get 23 on the start line is a fantastic showing from the Stragglers. It was particularly pleasing to be able to field a complete team for the ladies and 2 complete teams for the men.
A particular big thank you to Kev, Pam and Helene for being there to support.
Provisional results are here.
Let me know though if you spot anything odd or that doesn’t make sense. The times are, however, slightly dodgy. For example they imply that Simon Webb outsprinted Simon Brazil at the end and beat him by 14 seconds (or maybe he did!). Helen thinks she was 10 seconds quicker than recorded etc. Let me know know if you think your times are drastically wrong.
There are lots of highlights from the day but I would particularly pick out the performance of the Stragglers men’s A team, to finish above midtable with such strong competition is a very good outcome. For individual performances I would pick out the aforementioned Rob Wilcox and also the new devotee of XC, Simon Webb who in running with Simon Brazil, on a quite tricky course, made up the 11th and 12th scorers in the Coleman Cup competition.
For the ladies Jacky Balfour who is an XC novice, coming home as first Straggler lady and 26th overall is a great performance. Karen Levene also performed strongly coming in as second Straggler lady on the day. It was also really good to be able to include Bonnie Whang in the team, as she is one of the more distant residing members of the club. Talking of more distant members, this was also Tiff Gibson’s last race for the Stragglers before going out to work in Canada for a while, so we wish her all the best for her time out there and I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from Tiff.
Malcolm (email)
