Thankfully the Yorkshire Cross Country Champs at Lightwater Valley took place on Saturday January 4th, as if it had been due to happen on Sunday 5th it would certainly not have taken place at all! We beat the snow by a few hours however and it was cold but dry and underfoot conditions were immeasurably easier than last year’s standing water. A remarkable turnout of 13 Bingley women started the race, more than 15% of the entire field, and Rebecca (who was running the Senior race as practice for the BUCS Champs and, as a bonus, strengthening the team) was immediately in the leading group. Behind her Becky J and Emma were not too far behind while Sarah F and Suzie looked most likely to fight over the 4th scoring place. Amicia and Hayley were starting a close battle which lasted until the end and at this point Sarah P was with them with a steadily starting Jo close too. Shona was next with Stephanie, Trish and Becky W completing the baker’s dozen. The race was over 4 and a bit laps and just after half way, with 2 laps to go, Rebecca had lost touch with the leader but was looking good for 2nd place as the only runner close to her was a Junior and thus not in direct competition with her. Emma had moved clear of Becky and Suzie had got away from Sarah F, with Jo having moved through well to give herself an outside chance of scoring. Hayley had moved ahead of Amicia with Shona catching Sarah P who seemed to be struggling a bit and was being caught by Stephanie. Sure enough Stephanie moved past her on the penultimate lap, with the only other positional change being Amicia getting her second wind and going back past Hayley. The only major change on the final lap was that one of the Holmfirth runners dropped back significantly, with the result that what had looked like a close battle for Silver team medals turned out to be a relatively comfortable win for us, albeit a long way behind the dominant Leeds winners, and Rebecca did indeed finish in clear second place to collect another Silver. All in all a terrific performance by the team, if B and C teams counted we would have been 5th and 8th too, so a wonderful and thoroughly deserved result. Full results as follows:
Yorkshire Cross Country Champs, Lightwater Valley, 8.2k approx.:
1st Katy Wood (City of York) 31m 05s
2nd Rebecca Flaherty 31m 16s
15th Emma Moran 33m 47s
21st Becky Jane 34m 30s
26th Suzie Reid 35m 43s
30th Sarah Flaherty 36m 32s
32nd Jo Buckley 36m 48s
40th Amicia Lee 38m 23s
41st Hayley Norse 38m 29s
44th Shona Stone 39m 10s
51st Stephanie Robson 40m 22s
56th Sarah Pickering 42m 39s
57th Trish Emery 42m 42s
65th Becky Weight 45m 23s
82 finishers in all.
Team Results (4 to score):
1st Leeds City 20
2nd Bingley 64
3rd Holmfirth 72
While not quite matching the percentage of the women, our men also made up more than 10% of the field, with 17 on the start line for the 5+ lap, 10+k race. Unsurprisingly the only Olympic medallist amongst them (I assume the only one in the whole field unless Denby Dale is a hotbed of Speed Skaters) was our leader from the start and went on to achieve a solid top 20 finish. Behind him Ian and James had a good battle to be our second scorer with Thomas not too far behind. There was then a rather bigger gap before our final 2 scorers, David and Nick, came through. Behind them the rest of our runners came through thick and fast with Quentin just beating Paul T (even with me not running we still had a surfeit of Pauls). Next came Andrew who just held off Josh in the closest finish of all with Connor and Paul A not too far behind. A group of S’s came in next with Stephen beating Scott (in his last race before deserting us for the Southern hemisphere) and Simon, then Paul S and Emyr completed the set. Team-wise, unsurprisingly, the men couldn’t match the women, but 7th overall and 3rd from West Yorkshire was still a very solid performance, while just 1 more runner finishing in the top half of the field would have moved us up to 5th. Results as follows:
Yorkshire Cross Country Champs, Lightwater Valley, 10.1k approx:
1st Angus McMillan (City of York) 32m 37s
19th Jonny Brownlee 35m 04s
50th Ian Holmes 38m 43s
52nd James Hargreaves 38m 43s
64th Thomas Potter 39m 43s
92nd David Norris 42m 30s
103rd Nick Chapman 43m 27s
116th Quentin Emery 45m 17s
119th Paul Tiffany 45m 55s
127th Andrew Coulton 46m 44s
129th Josh Spencer 46m 48s
137th Connor Dlugosz 47m 31s
140th Paul Allwood 47m 48s
142nd Stephen Fry 48m 13s
145th Scott Prince 48m 32s
148th Simon Blake 49m 38s
157th Paul Spencer 52m 33s
162nd Emyr Rees 60m 20s
163 finishers in all.
Team results (6 to score):
1st Leeds 53
2nd Hallamshire 80
3rd City of York 209
7th Bingley 380
Full results :
https://results.sporthive.com/events/7274802459069906944Photos : Woodentops and Becky Weight. More pictures in the Gallery.
Article : Paul Lemmon
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