Warwickshire County Xc Champs. Burbage Common Sat. 14^th Jan.2006

For the first time to my knowledge these championships comprised of a combination between Warwickshire and Leicestershire/Rutland, which is fortunate given the paucity of entries,  perhaps because Rutland is largely a lake and a nature reserve.

I digress, Burbage common could easily be the English equivalent of the Everglades, I’m quite sure some of the U13’s are still in there, please check that you brought your child home, not someone else’s. Not strictly to do with women’s xc it was good to see an almost full compliment of junior teams for Birchfield, thanks to Norma Blaine and Keith Holt’s groups, special mention to Terry Roberts (asst. team manager) who, virtually single handed,  looked after the young athletes despite silly hat! I would like to single out one young athlete who had a fairly torrid time with her previous Club. Vicky Cluett , in her first proper outing for us finished 15^th in her age group despite being quite tense about the whole thing; there were many other fine performances by our young runners but it’s not my remit to report on them.

THE RACE.

Faye Manger is not really an endurance runner, but today put in a really outstanding performance to lead the team back in 9^th place which will give her automatic entry into the Inter counties race in a few weeks time. She didn’t have a good lead up to the race as her washing machine ate her vest in the week , and then she stepped into Doggy do prior to the start, but she didn’t get lost!

Rachel Cook hasn’t been well recently , but still competed complete with hacking cough, to finish 17^th.

Michelle Tanner , who is taller than the average pencil neck (as we endurance runners are known) would have had big problems on this poo heap but she still was next scorer to finish in 29^th.

Louise (heavy metal) Harman, bless her, had to endure me for the day; my transport you see. She smiled through the whole muddy process and finished 31^st. to complete the team scoring.

Claire Beaumont, was very close behind in 40^th.

TEAM RESULT

4^TH PLACE.