English Cross Country Championships. Herrington Park Sunderland Sat. 10th March 2007
Alternative
Race Report.
First
thing is Sunderland is a hell of a long way to travel; some of the teams must
have started out on Wednesday.
Most
of our runners were lucky enough to have been able to stay in the Motel
carefully selected by yours truly, located above a night Club with no parking.
Apparently
the evening was reasonably uneventful except Jak Frankham locked himself out of
his room within half an hour and then lost his pyjamas?
Lyn
Orbell had a shower at 08:15 then looked at her watch again the right way up to
find it was 03:15.
Circumstances
dictated that I drove up on the morning of the race and I was able to take the
tent, which was a blessing because the wind blowing across the venue was strong
enough to skin a rhinoceros. There were several people holding it down while the
senior women got changed after the race, on reflection that sounds different to
the way I intended it. The tent is
now terminally ill and needs serious treatment.
I
did visit a Portaloo, and without going into too much detail the instability was
quite disturbing. The Portaloo’s instability I mean.
Terrific
course as you would expect from the man who organises the Great North run, lots
of twists and turns but on good surface.
SENIOR
WOMEN’S RACE
Emma
Phillips had
to endure some coercion from Amanda Dalkins and me to persuade her that she
wasn’t a bad XC runner; just better suited to some courses than others. This
one obviously suited her, she finished first scorer in 52nd.
Amanda
Dalkins fell
warming up, she said Emma pushed her over, there’s a joke if ever there was
one, Emma weighs about as much as a bag of crisps! No damage was done though and
Amanda finished 66th.
Louise
Harman had a
fairly uneventful day for her, can’t say about the following evening though;
she was next in 176th.
Claire
Beaumont,
what an attention seeker, if it’s not Pole dancing it’s something else.
We
get to the start pen, team photos taken, she goes off to do a few strides and
trips over a blade of grass; collapses in agony. I appeal to the 23 start
officials to radio for first aid, they look at me in amazement obviously not
realising that somebody could get injured on the start line! Mind you I’m on
their side, it never occurred to me either. Anyway we dragged her from the
cavalry charge re-tied her shoe and sent her off with her broken ankle, which
responded quite well to the exercise. She finished 203rd. and closed
the scoring.
Hannah
Hore was the
non scorer on the day but ran well on her gradual return from injury, she
finished 230th. There were 300 runners.
Birchfield
finished 13th team.
OTHER
RESULTS.
U
13 girls, Lillianne Sutton had a
terrific run to finish 54th in a field of 270.
U
15 girls, Danni Johnson continued her
fine season to finish 30th as a bottom age runner, which equalled her
result as a top age runner in the U13’s last year.
Junior
Women, Sarah Capewell finished 84th
and Holly O’Meara, with a streaming
cold, finished 88th.
U13
boys gained a team result thanks to the efforts off the Griffith’s family.
Ben
Griffiths
finished 97th, Jamal Logan
finished 151st, Alex Jackson
finished 198th, Ollie
Griffiths, who is only a couple of weeks past his 11th birthday,
overcame a serious attack of the collywobbles before the race closed the scoring
in 209th .this gave the team 23rd.
U
15 boys, new lad Nick Hardy, a very
promising 800m. runner extended his repertoire on this occasion to finish 56th
out of 266 runners
U
17 men, Richard O’Donnell, who has
missed a considerable amount of winter training due to injury, finished 113th. Jak
Frankham had probably the best run of his short career so far to finish 114th.
Michael Gibbs didn’t have one of his better days but stuck at it
to finish 168th, sadly a team result was denied by a last minute
withdrawal due to illness.
Keen
observers will notice a certain limitation in attendance from a wider variety of
coaching groups, however these reports don’t set out to make points but to
inform and hopefully entertain.