Liane, Annette at Writtle and Jayne at Victoria Park
This weekend was the Essex Cross Country Champs Vets at Writtle University College, we had representatives in all 3 categories Men 40+, Men 50+ and Women 35+
The men’s 40+ team came in 5th out of 12 teams competing, 1st home for Benfleet was Andrew Low in a fantastic 9th out of 79 needing to sprint the last 100 yards to secure his position, next was Terry Spooner in 23rd, Graham Booty in 32nd despite looking a little worse for wear from his midweek antics! & completing the scoring for the team was Ian Pike in 55th place.
The men’s 50+ runners also came 5th in their category scoring 1 less point than their younger team members! Nick Rankin, Alan Clark & Richard Jones all finished within 10 seconds of each other in positions 24, 25 & 26 respectively, next came Doug Stephens in 43rd & then PB Steve in 83rd out of 125.
In the women’s race we had 5 starters but unfortunately I pulled up injured after 1 mile leaving the rest of the girls to do us proud. 1st home was Jacqui Watson in 21st but 6th in the 45+, then 71st Annette Johnson who despite suffering an achilles injury half way round unlike me still battled round and sprinted the final straight to just beat Liane Conners in 72nd, with the final points scorer Laura Williams in 95th out of 125. The women’s team came 16th out of 21st.
As only vets could run in this race it does not could towards our league table
We also had runners at Dorset Coastal Marathon Lee Gumbrell was first home time unknown. Followed by Jack Hodges who finished in 5:51:41
Jayne Stacey ran the London Victoria Park 10K in a time of 43:10 which is a new PB by 49 seconds.