Stragglers cross-country championships
Posted by on 21 October 2017
The second running of the now annual club cross-country championships took place on Sunday 8th October and for the second year running attracted a great turnout to usher in the cross-country season. 58 club members tackled the relatively flat but attractive 5.6 mile course with both the men and ladies this year completing the same distance. Up for grabs were awards in five-year age categories with runners also competing for the Stragglers Perpetual trophies which in the inaugural year were won by Rachel Woodthorpe and Rob Wilcox. Once again, the race was blessed with fine weather as the club runners toed the start line next to the traditional dog bin marker on Burnell Avenue!
The ladies enjoyed a fine competition with some categories being keenly fought especially the F55 category with Pam Witter making a welcome return to action running 38:56 but ultimately being held off by Liz Killip running 38:34, impressive for someone that doesn’t run cross-country! Very pleasingly there were competitors in all the age categories including the F65 category where a special mention must go to Barbara Hill winning this category (having actually stepped down from the F70 category to do so).
Some of our regular cross-country runners picked up awards, Nicole Hambling F40, Karen Levene, F45, and Helen Hill F60. However, particular mention must go to two runners completely new to cross-country you were first in their age categories, Juliana Greenwood F35, and Niamh Finlay F50.
Star billing however was reserved for the first lady over the line and winner of the 2017 perpetual Trophy, Heidi Russenberger in 36:35.
For the men there was a very good competition at the sharp end with Andy Wren (2nd overall) running 33:23 to pick up the senior man trophy with Crispin Allen 20 seconds slower (3rd overall) to win the M45 awards. In the battle of the (unrelated) Duffy’s, Donovan managed to hold off Laurence by all of three seconds recording times of 35:04 and 35:07 with both of them respectively winning the M40 and M55 prizes. The M60 gold was picked up by Ian Callendar, M65 by John Beer, and M70 by Mike Garner.
Star billing for the men however on the day was with Roy Reeder who held off Andy Wren to win the race in 32:53, not bad for an M50! and in doing so getting his name on the perpetual trophy for 2017. One interesting fact was that this year’s winning time was one second faster than that recorded by Rob Wilcox in the previous year, so here’s to 2018!
Malcolm Davies
