After such a successful season in the West Yorkshire League hopes were high for the women’s team in the Yorkshire Champs at Lightwater Valley, especially with Sarah Flaherty and new recruit Suzie Reid added to the regular league runners. It was a cool but bright and fairly still day and underfoot conditions were unexpectedly ok apart from one horribly wet section at the bottom of the course. 10 Bingley runners took part and all put in excellent performances in such a high quality race, well it was won by an Olympic finalist! Yas and Emma, as they had in the league race at Middleton Park, had a close race at the front of the Bingley pack with Yas again coming out narrowly on top. Suzie, making her club XC debut, came through brilliantly to be our 3rd scorer and the scoring team was completed by Sarah, just ahead of Jo. The rest of the Bingley runners came in pretty close together with Ruth, Sarah P and Shona just inside the top 50 and then Lesley & Amicia just outside. While it was clear that Leeds had won the team event we still had hopes of sneaking in for a medal, but in the end the clubs who beat us in the league, Knavesmire and Holmfirth, made it a double whammy by edging us down to 4th. Our strength in depth meant our Ladies were also 9th team and first B team. Wonderful results for the teams. If only Rebecca was a senior….
Again the men were relatively weak with just 7 of us taking part, but at least that was enough for a team as long as 6 of us finished and in fact all 7 of us did. As Alistair and Ben are Juniors and John was resting an injured calf only James of our regular front 4 was taking part, and sure enough he comfortably led the team home with a top 100 finish. Our second finisher was a welcome return to the team for Graham, just outside the 100, and he was followed home by Nick who has just got better and better with each race over the season. Next was Paul, getting a bit closer to last season’s form at last, then came Stephen with by far his best run since his latest comeback. Simon completed the scoring team, perhaps suffering for a relatively quick start, as he had led Nick, Paul and Stephen for varying amounts of the race. Andrew was our final finisher, good to see him back after his annoyingly long lasting illness. The team finished 13th, far from disastrous, and at least we had a complete team which is more than can be said for many of the other local clubs. Results as follows:
Yorkshire Cross Country Championships, Lightwater Valley (near Ripon), 06/01/2024:
Senior Women – 8.5k approx.:
1st Alex Bell (Pudsey & Bramley) 30m 56s
15th Yas Small 34m 39s
17th Emma Clayton 34m 56s
26th Suzie Reid 36m 08s
30th Sarah Flaherty 36m 49s
31st Jo Buckley 37m 07s
43rd Ruth Thackray 38m 37s
47th Sarah Pickering 39m 49s
49th Shona Stone 39m 51s
51st Lesley Watson 40m 16s
53rd Amicia Lee 41m 17s
89 finishers in all
Team Results:
1st Leeds 21
2nd Knavesmire 75
3rd Holmfirth 76
4th Bingley 88
9th Bingley B 170 (1st B team)

Senior Men – 10.4k approx.:
1st Angus McMillan (City of York) 33m 33s
76th James Hargreaves 42m 41s
104th Graham Askew 45m 28s
121st Nick Chapman 47m 05s
138th Paul Lemmon 48m 35s
147th Stephen Fry 50m 07s
150th Simon Blake 50m 44s
164th Andrew Coulton 54m 20s
173 finishers in all
Team Results:
1st Leeds 58
2nd Hallamshire 69
3rd City of York 146
13th Bingley 736

Paul Lemmon & Stephanie Robson – Cross Country Team Managers.