2nd Cross Country League Meeting
Another successful day for BvH’s men
Bournville Harriers men’s cross country team had another very successful outing at the second Division 2 XC league race at Burbage common on Saturday 7th December 2013. There was another good turnout with 20 BvH runners competing and the A and B teams both finished in 2nd place on the day. The A(B) teams remain in first(second) place in the league after the two races. The full results are here:
http://www.birminghamccleague.
The team had a number of A and B counters from the first race missing including myself, Gareth Cadd, Brad Todd and Matt Slater. Fortunately we had Matt Cook, Rich Bayliss, James Collins and Matt Sandison, who all missed the first race, returning to the team. The weather conditions were perfect for running although the ground was heavy under foot in places. It was an impressive sight to see the field of over 280 runners setting off on the 3 lap course of approximately 2 miles each. As the runners emerged from the woods around halfway on the first lap BvH’s Dean Parker was up in second place. However, it soon became apparent that the lead runners had followed the tree line for this section of the race when they should have gone straight across the loop. After much shouting and confusion the runners just behind the front found themselves at the front and the diversion that Dean and the other previous leaders had taken meant they had dropped down at least 15 places. Dean managed to recover and finished in 11th place, one higher than in the first race. Sam Chatwin’s impressive progress continued finishing in 14th place 4 positions higher than the first race. Matt Cook was close behind showing his quality and finishing in 16th pace. Sean Rose and Rich Bayliss packed well to finish 29th and 30th respectively. It was good to see Rich back from his injury problems of the summer. John McKeon made his debut in the top 6 BvH finishers to complete the A team and finishing 10 places up from the first race.
The B team counters were James Collins, Matt Sandison, Oliver Kirkland, Chris Collins, Stuart Pearson and Richard Rollins. It was good to see James and Matt running their first league races this season. Oliver knocked almost 20 places off his position from November. Chris Collins switched to ‘barefoot’ shoes in the middle of the race as both of the soles of his spikes came off in the mud (strangely both came off at the same time suggesting soles do in fact have souls). Stuart had to dig to get round the course as he was suffering from tight hamstrings. Richard continued his good progress, finishing 9 places up from the first race.
It was again great to see that we had enough runners to complete a ‘C’ team (Jonathan Hammond, Dave Harte, Ed Hartley, Paul Dugmore, Jack Roberts, Terry Doherty) plus Mark Doudican and Barrie Roberts. Jonathan improved his position by almost 30 places. Dave Harte finished in 166th place whilst wearing number 166 which caused me confusion when recording the numbers/positions (I was unable to work out the chances of this happening)!
So thank you to everyone who ran and had an enjoyable day out. A big thanks also to the friends and family who came along to support. But the biggest thanks goes to John Enright who stepped in to fill our marshalling role at the event.
The next league race is January 11th 2014 at Coventry. Let’s keep the good work going!
-Paul Thompson
It was `quite a feet` for Chris to complete the League Race at Burbage Common. That said,`a reasonable day at the office.` Hopefully,availability will be better for the next League encounter on January 11th,2014 in Coventry.
Thank you for the nice race report, Paul… I hope you can run the next one… And well done to Chris, for having the forethought to bring his ‘barefoots’ with him, they certainly came in handy (or footy?)… I always wear my ‘feet’, (as I like to informally call them) inside my spikes (sock style)… just in case I have a similar mishap.
Has anyone had a similar experience?… I know I have!