Nicola Cumley reports: First league race of the season and the girls had new spikes. Emily and Michaela were sporting this seasons latest colours. At the other end of the spectrum spikes were coming out of bags that had been closed since they were zipped shut last march.
The tent was full of enthusiasm; with so many members competing it was a great atmosphere. Reports were coming in that the ditch/water feature, which I’m sure was on all our minds last night as we listened to the rain beating down, was dry! Happy days.
16 excited Bournville women lined up at the start line.
Off we went… The support was fantastic, there was a cheer on every corner, and all brilliant encouraging support . Thank you to everyone who was there. I personally really like the Leamington course. There is something for everyone, a wooded section, some fast flat hard ground, a small mound!!!!!!, a ditch and flat fields.
The dreaded mound did not disappoint, especially second time around, it hurt, it hurt a lot (I hope it was not just me that found that), how the men do it three times I really don’t know? I think the only slight downside on the course is that it can get a little crowded in narrow bits and some parts are hard to overtake on. I found the last section very tough, it was almost like my body had decided it had run far enough and on meeting with Garmin carrying runners at the end it turns out my body was right, the race was actually almost 1k longer than we normally run.
16 Bournville women crossed the finish line still looking strong and cool, maybe a little less excited.
Our results range from 39th, an excellent performance by Linda, 66th from Kathryn Holliday only her second outing in spikes, Sarah averaging 7.5min miles to come 117th, a fantastic competitive finish from Julie and Emily in 129th and 130th.
This year we hope to get a vets team out, four vets competed including Lesley Pymm on her second run of the day in 220th (I was eavesdropping in the toilet queue and it seems that she may have done the park run this morning as well) and Lesley Bryne putting in a strong performance after a few years off cross country. Watching the finish it was a constant stream of teal vests coming in across the whole field.
The mens race was brilliant, there was so many BvH and looking so strong. Once again a day to be very proud to be a Bournville Harrier. On my way to the race I got chatting to a member of another club. When I said I was from Bournville she commented that the club had a good reputation, our profile in the region is obviously high and on a day like today rightly so.
Thanks to Sarah for organising us all and for the fabulous goodie bags.
BvH positions – official results to follow.
Just arrived back home from Israel (literally).Delighted to learn of the excellent XC Results.Congratulations to all concerned.
Barrie and Katie
Great result Ladies! Sets us up well for the next XC.
The results are on the MCAA website – they won’t be on the Birmingham XC League site as the womens’ race is not part of that. Thanks for all your hard work with the GP, Chris.
Have just done GP points for this event and in the process discoved that the results are up on Power of 10, though not on the Birmingham XC League site yet for some reason. The field was huge! 275 people ran in the ladies race. Well done to all of you who raced.
Here is the link to the results, in case anyone wants to know what time they did: http://www.thepowerof10.info/results/results.aspx?meetingid=56153
Amazing performance everyone! Thank you all for the fantastic support you gave to the men afterwards too
Thanks to everyone for such a great run. The atmosphere was really fantastic as Nioky says. Special thanks to the Masters runners – it was so good to know that we were going to count in that event too. Please keep coming – we have to have a team out at every league XC. Yes, I was at the parkrun in the morning, but only as tailrunner (and this meant that I walked much of it) as I wanted to do my best for the team. I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next XC which is a course I have not done before. Having said that, I had only done Leamington once before and that was the opposite direction, so it was all a bit different.
Well done everyone, a great start to the season!!
Great report Nicky, Well done to all BvH Ladies on a great day for the Club…