Report by Sam Harper.
The winter league always holds a special place for me. They have always been my favourite races and there has been a lot of different races at different venues over the years. One venue which has been a constant is the campsite at Fforest Fields. In all the years I have been there (which I think it may be 13!) Builth have managed to tweak the route countless times and there are always sections that are familiar and sections that are new. I absolutely loved the route this year. Starting off along the track and only a small section across a fields – it was easy to follow tracks with lots of glorious mud on a glorious sunny morning. I may not be at full fitness and couldn’t run the hills the way I could ten years ago, but I really enjoyed it. Back to winter cross country at it’s best.
And I think the 30 or so Croft runners enjoyed it to! The ladies first team – Roxy, Mia, Jo M, Steph M did a great job to finish second placed team. There were three Croft ladies teams – Bron, myself, Steph M and Ali D coming in 11th place and the third team led by Anna, Tom Powell, Gemma D and Theresa finishing in 14th. We only need another two to join Claire and Hayley and we will have enough for a fourth team at the next race.
The mens team was led by Eric who had a hard battle to finish in second place in 41.07 – only 6 seconds behind race winner Sam Butler. Gareth, Jasper and Simon joined him to make up the first team finishing in sixth place. Four teams for the Croft men – with Steve, Neil P, Toby and Oliver finishing as 16th team, Joe, Dave Millichap, Ian and Neil T 23rd team and Oli, Roland, Huw and Mike H 28th team. Interestingly for the men we only need two more to join Tim WH and Tom D for another team.
The scoring system is different this year from previous races in that it is all four races to count and it is time, not postition to work out the final places so there is all to run for the final team positions in the next three races.
Well done to our two under 17 runners who were running one lap of the race. Summer Morgan who was first FU17 and Jamie who was third MU17.
Before the main event and running in cold and frosty conditions were the junior races. Great to see young runners getting the opportunity to take part in league races and great to see the sky blue vests!
Taking part in the U11 race were Taite Morgan (11th), Ted Tomlinson (12th) and Isobelle Parsons (7th) with 20 runners. Owen Spicer was 5th in the U13 race and in the U15 race James Mander was second and Henry Wall fourth.
Full results can be found on the readysetgo website.
Huge thanks to Builth wells and the owners of the Fforest Field Campsite for hosting the next event.
The next one at ours is at Croft – we want as many people as possible to run but will also need vulunteers so please keep an eye out for facebook posts asking for helpers.
