Croft Castle cross country

News Winter league

What a glorious day at Croft Castle! Thank you to all the many helpers, cake makers, course markers, car parkers, marshals, timekeepers, not forgetting the runners. The ladies again showed their mettle, and their strength in depth. Sue fought hard in the wake of Katherine King, coming home 2nd lady, with Irina showing great guts to stick close behind in 3rd. Nicky surprised us all by running, and then finishing 8th (out of 46), first FV50 by a mile. Sam, Jo and Ruth (returning to fitness) packed well, in 14th, 15th and 16th. Kim and Elaine completed the ladies’ squad, but were one short of a C team. Well done both for turning out on a very demanding course. Our A team was again 1st, keeping 1st place overall; the B team were 4th.

Stacey battled his way through the field, finishing a very fine 4th (and 1st over 40). Mark in 6th was just 40 seconds adrift. Andrew ran two laps and then wisely decided to call it a day. Dave G ran a great race (13th), with Dave A, 2 minutes behind, but holding off Neil P (24th) and Mick, who was first MV55. Martin again performed well (33rd), as did Paul G (45th) who finished just ahead of Ben R and Stuart. Neil, Ashley and Frank negotiated the course without incident in the mid 60 minutes, while Tom and Jeremy (just) sneaked in under 70 minutes. Brian Davies, arriving in time for the minute’s silence used the first lap as a warm-up, as he comprehensively beat the other two MV70s, and finished just ahead of Crispin. The men’s A Team were narrowly beaten by Wye Valley, and now share 2nd place overall with them. The B team were 7th, but are 5th= overall. The C and D teams are 15th and 16th (out of 17!) Well done to Toby Austin, winning the junior race (no other competitor in sight!); he was very well positioned in the men’s race after one lap, but was forced to limit himself to the shorter course.

Comment on this article

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.