Met CC League, Seniors, fixture 3 at Wormwood Scrubs: Seniors

While the club's top U23 women were in Liverpool racing in the European CCTrials, the rest of the squad took a major step towards clinching their first-ever London City Runner Metropolitan CC League title at Wormwood Scrubs on Saturday.

With Linda Jackson the first of 6 women in 21, and Highgate a little weak on the day, the team now has a good buffer of 103 points at the top of the league.

With Serpentine whittling away much of our men's league lead, the team still goes into the Christmas break with their noses in front of the central London outfit as Shaftesbury's challenge appears to have faded. Hywel Care's 3^rd place was the stand-out performance.

The going was surprisingly firm with no sign of the waterlogging that had been reported earlier in the week. The result was fast racing which, of course, suited some more than others.

Women

Going into the fixture with a mere 25 point lead over perennial champions Highgate, it soon became clear that it was going to be our day as a number of our women had very good runs. As Shaftesbury's Rachel Felton raced well clear from the gun, Linda Jackson was always in contention in the chasing group, finally having to settle for 4^th and – as usual – first W40 in the field of 132 finishers. In 9^th, Kat Gundersen consolidated her status as a regular top 10 finisher, and will have noted that just 10 seconds separated her from 6^th place. 2^nd W40 overall was Bernie Pritchett, who was delighted with a return to acceptable form.

The extremely reliable Diana Kennedy (16) delivered another good position and just pipped Rachel Lund (17) who enjoyed her highest-ever league finish. And the scoring 6 was closed by Maggie Powell (21) who, still just 25, is showing her best form since she swept all before her as a youngster in the 1994-1999 period. With Highgate weaker than usual, our team won victory on the day by 78 points – a very useful margin.

17-year old triathlete Becky Hewitt (34) was not quite at the level of her fixture 1 run (28^th), suggesting she may currently be more suited to less quick courses. Andrea Possee will be slightly disappointed to have not improved on her fixture 2 position, but consolidation is better than deterioration. Lucy Wilson (55) was closer to Possee than at Claybury, but two positions further back. Team manager W40 Alex Wardle made the top half of the field for the first time in several moons, improving to 65 from 80 at Claybury. And W50 Stef McCarthy finished in a decent 75^th place in her first league CC of the season. The B team remain in a fine 10^th place in the league.

Team manager Wardle was pleased that her squad had successfully waged war on two fronts in a single day, "Hats off to a mighty run from Jess Sparke for finishing 3rd in the Euro Trials in Liverpool, and it's excellent for the club that 4 of our finest young women athletes were in the mix there." As for the league, she is taking nothing for granted. "Over-confidence has a nasty habit of coming back to kick you in the teeth," she pointed out.

Men

The Scrubs has often been a graveyard for our men's teams, but this time our youthful squad emerged relatively unscathed. An unusually high rate of unavailability was largely compensated for by the season's first appearances of university students Tom Phillips, Omar Mansour and Gavin Lewis. In another big field of 336 finishers, a large and strong Serpentine squad chipped away most of our league lead, and the two clubs go into the Christmas break separated by just 15 points but with a clear lead over Shaftesbury.

The race began very quickly, with our Dan Agustus laying down the gauntlet through the first turn and down to the prison. By around the 1K mark, though, Agustus was drifting backwards as a group of 4 established themselves at the front of the race: Enfield's Paddy Hamilton, Hillingdon's Dan Dalmedo, Serpentine's Nick Torry and our own Hywel Care, recently returned from his annual 3 week training stint in Kenya.

Dalmedo eventually dropped off, and Torry opened up a lead on the remaining duo. But the lead three came back together and it was anybody's guess down the "back straight" opposite the finish line. Care suspected that Hamilton's track speed would be the danger, but it was actually Torry who accelerated impressively away with around 500m remaining to take the victory, with Hamilton pipping Care, who was well-satisfied with his run.

A little way back, Agustus and Bertie Powell had strange runs. Agustus drifted back to around 15^th, while Powell drifted forwards to around 8^th, but each then reversed the tendency and Agustus (8) ended satisfied with his best run of the season while Powell was unhappy with his 13^th. Tom Phillips, up from Cardiff University for the weekend, was confident enough to watch the fast opening start from a distance and then steadily work his way through to a useful 18^th.

18-year old 800m man Omar Mansour ran a very committed race, placed inside 20 for the first of the two laps. As he tired he was caught by Brunel University student Craig Berg, but he hung in and just took the sprint from Berg for whom this was probably one race too many after recent efforts – the two finished 25 and 26. So we had 6 in 26 to Serpentine's 6 in 36, but over the next 6 men we lost ground to our new rivals.

19 year old Gavin Lewis raced despite an ongoing mild cold, and raced realistically, starting sensibly and progressing through to a satisfactory 42. Darren Southcott and Andrew Clare both performed better than at Claybury – Southcott improving from 77 to 61 and Clare from 81 to 65 – but 18 year old Southcott retained the upper hand over Scrubs local Clare. Both can be considered pretty decent runs.

Harold Wyber (85) is still struggling to improve, but was pleased to at least be 10^th scorer. Jon Long (99) showed that his 166 at Claybury was clearly an aberration, and M50 Dave Cox, struggling since undergoing root canal surgery, closed the scoring 12 in 120^th place. With Serpentine packing excellently into 76, they took the spoils on the day by 86 points, while Shaftesbury's 12^th man was down in 212^th place meaning that the Humbugs ceded almost 300 points to us. (Congratulations, though, to SBH's U17 Richard Goodman on his extraordinary performance in winning the Under-TWENTY European Trial race!)

Our B team scoring was opened by M45 Ray Dzikowski, hampered by a tight hamstring, in 124, 5" ahead of 17 year old Karim Ali (126), who is proving a useful and reliable squad member. The experienced Richard Holland provided light entertainment when he pulled his regular stunt of arriving late and had to work through the field from the rear pinning his number on as he went to finish 141. Leave home earlier? You can't teach an old dog new tricks!

M50 Iain Cumming had his best run of the season for 150, ahead of relative novice Keith McShea (161) and champion swimmer Alex Chklar (162). Steve Ladhams, another novice, held off old-hand Andy Coleman for 175 and 177. M50 2^nd claimer Phil Oatham had a baptism of fire in 192, while Andy Smith performed steadily for 216. Paul Stockings' dodgy back "went" a mile from home and he staggered home in 235.

There was some good competitive stuff further back too, as we closed a good 29 runners on the day. Steve Lambert (260) proved he is progressing by taking a rare victory over Michael Murphy (266) and closing our B team, while both were split by the still-rehabilitating Tony Pamphilon (262), this time running to 85% of his maximum heart rate. Jonny Hargreaves (279) won a club London Marathon place this week so now has every incentive to improve his fitness. Adam Thorpe made a welcome return to Met League action after injury in 308th place, and Stuart Phillips (333) will be surprised to learn that he beat 3 men, not 1 as he thought.

Team manager Terry McCarthy was reasonably pleased. "If you'd offered me this result on the start line, I'd have snapped your hand off," he said. "With many of our top guys injured or snowed under with work, these young lads have been the backbone of the team and we're very proud of them."