English National CC Championship: Seniors
The 2010 English National Cross Country Championships again had our members reaching for the history books as the current men’s squad threatened to match the achievements of our legendary squad of 1958-63 and Matt Gunby enjoyed our men’s highest individual placing for 35 years. Jess Sparke was disappointed to only finish 7th, and two of our top four women dropped out of their race injured, leaving the women’s squad – the Southern champions – a little deflated.
Men
Once the lineup of an excellent men’s team had been decided, team manager Terry McCarthy did the sums, examined what was required to medal, and said the realistic aim was a top 6 finish in the main, 6-to-score, competition. This would probably require an average of 65 points per man. We had 11 men on the start line who are “top 25 in the Met League” material, including a few top 5.
Roundhay Park in Leeds was again a fine venue, with clear skies, terrain that was often firm and not unduly boggy, and great options for spectators, especially on the parallel down and uphill of the notorious Hill 60, named after a First World War battlefield in Flanders.
And things went well for our men over the 12K race. We have not seen much of 21-year old Matt Gunby this winter. A student working intensively on his dissertation at Durham University, his first sport is duathlon/triathlon and he has spent hundreds of hours this winter seeking to improve his swimming. But he exhibits a similar cross-country ability to world triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee and at Leeds he posted the highest men’s finish - 28th - since club marathon record holder Colin Moxsom was 17th in 1975. Off limited running training he had been hoping for a top 30 placing, so he was satisfied. After a perfectly judged race, he was 2’ 26” behind winner Andy Vernon.
Next home in his first National was Lotfi Chebli, who had been considering a top 15 finish until 20 minutes before the race when his team manager attempted to describe the standard and competitiveness and urge a more realistic top 50 spot. After a positive start that left him lying around 20th, Chebli settled back and ran strongly to finish a very fine 51st – the experience and depth of a 1400+ National field left him smiling and shaking his head. In 64th Hywel Care has not enjoyed the performances he was hoping for this winter and this race was no different – he was probably 25 seconds outside a pleasing finish. Martyn Cryer’s race reflected his recent Met League form, no better no worse, and he finished 72nd, 11 seconds behind Care.
Matt Barnes-Smith ran a great team race. He never planned to run the National but an achilles injury has disrupted all his plans since Christmas and his coach decided he could benefit from this race. At around Mile 2 he was nicely placed in around 30th, but the recent lack of training took its toll and he grimly slipped back to 82nd, nonetheless a tremendous contribution to the team result. And rounding off the scoring six was Daniel Agustus who won the Chingford League race at Trent Park last weekend. In the past a 27th placer for Sale Harriers, this year his realistic objective was the top 100-110, so his 93rd was a very sound run.
Paul Stockings’ on-the-spot calculations had our team 4th after Aldershot, Leeds and Bedford, but he overlooked a resurgent Coventry Godiva Harriers who also beat us. Our 5th place was our best result since 1961’s bronze medals. Team manager McCarthy said, “We really nailed it today. It’s an achievement built on great team spirit, not just on the 6 individuals who scored. One major source of satisfaction is pipping Tipton Harriers, who also wear green-and-white hoops. They’re a legendary harrier club who have won the National more times than clubhouse manager John Baker has joked about vegetarians needing to eat mixed grills!”
He pointed out that Martin Nicholson, the club’s now deceased supporter who was behind a drive to improve the club’s distance sections 5 years ago, would be delighted to see that we were first of the “big track clubs”, referring to Belgrave, Newham, Sale, Birchfield and Shaftesbury, the latter two of which failed to close six men yesterday. It is a sign of the Essex athletics times that the only other clubs in the county to close 6 men were Chelmsford (39th) and Eton Manor (a plucky 103rd). 314 clubs were represented in the race.
Teams: 1, Aldershot 182; 2, Leeds City 208; 3, Bedford 291; 4, Coventry Godiva 309; 5, WGEL 390; 6, Tipton Harriers 392; 7, Belgrave 567.
We did equally well in the slightly less prestigious 9-to-score, where we also finished 5th. As he did in the Southern, Bertie "Hopalong" Powell ran most of the race with just one shoe, yet still managed a fine 131st. It was a pity, because it suggests he would have smashed his National PB of 111. Ben Hope (145) was delighted to be back in the thick of the action in his second race back after injury. On one level, Angus Holford (205) was pleased enough to make the scoring 9 in his first senior National, while on another he was somewhat disappointed with his run.
The 9-to-score team was over 200 points clear of our hooped cousins Tipton, and a massive 800 clear of 7th placed Hallamshire Harriers. Credit to our Met League rivals Serpentine for finishing 10th in the 6-to-score and 8th in the 9-to-score, albeit well adrift of us.
We also had tremendous backup at this very good level, with Ed Messer (208) just 6 seconds behind Holford in his first race for months (he works most Saturdays) and stalwart Kevin Murphy (220), far from fit due to the demands of work and fatherhood, only 9 seconds further back.
There was then a 7-minute breather before 8 other regular B team men who were passionate about taking part in this great event started to come through. New dad Jon Powell (714) drove across the Pennines from his Manchester home to join siblings Bertie and Maggie in a grand annual family outing and was happy to survive relatively unscathed. Iain Cumming (780) accepted a club place for the London Marathon late on so is short of training and was around 100 places short of where he would normally be.
Andy Coleman made the mistake of running with his velcro strap but without the chip, so was not recorded by the results as he finished one place in front of coach Alistair Holford (960) did a great job overseeing the young athletes and setting up the camp before finishing 37 places lower than in 2009. Like Cumming, Jonny Hargreaves (1074) was also further back than last year, around 200 places in his case. On the other hand Steve Lambert (1125) has made huge progress since finishing 1413th in his first National last year. Michael Murphy (1177) was 80 places higher than last year, albeit around 2 minutes down on some-time rival Lambert.
Women
The Southern champions lined up with hopes of medals as our big hitting twins Jess and Kat Sparke were at the front of the pen with very good backup from the reliable and high-quality Stewart, Jackson, Gundersen, Kennedy and Powell in particular. But things did not go to plan.
Jess Sparke, so impressive and successful since November, went out aggressively and was leading the race alongside Hatti Dean after a mile. But they were caught by a group and then our great hope dropped off to finish a very disappointed 7th. She afterwards reflected that perhaps she had trained too hard the previous Tuesday and also maybe started too hard on the day – a combination, perhaps. Hopefully she will learn from the experience and turn things round at the World Trials/Inter-Counties race in a fortnight’s time in Birmingham.
Kat Sparke, meanwhile, started the race despite suffering from achilles tendonitis. In the warm-up she knew it wasn’t right and running a couple of hills in the race itself forced her to abandon. Our next theoretical scorer, Linda Jackson, was also in trouble, with an adductor problem surfacing and forcing her to drop out before halfway. With Lauren Stewart and Kat Gundersen running their usual race, it left our supporters shouting to Di Kennedy that she was our 4th scorer which, puzzled, she attempted to compute while forging onwards to finish 131st. 2.51 marathon runner Stewart, in training for the London, used her evident strength to pick her way through the field to 67th, some 4 minutes behind winner Steph Twell. Gundersen’s 80th place was a significant, 28 place improvement on her 2009 performance.
Our 10th compared with last year's outstanding 5th.
Teams: 1, Charnwood 78; 2, Aldershot 99; 3, Bristol 134……. 10, WGEL 285….. 13, Highgate 394; ….. 19, Serpentine 548.
Maggie Powell had had a major pre-race scare when brother Jon failed to turn up with her spikes until the very last minute. As a result, adrenalin surging, she started too quickly, only to go into a nasty reverse when the adrenalin ran out. Di Kennedy swept past her on her way to closing the scoring team. Powell made a late rally and closed back to within 6 seconds of her for fifth scorer and 132. Both women seriously improved their results from last year (160 and 230 respectively, though Kennedy has a best of 91 in 2001 albeit in a far smaller field of 336 finishers compared to this year’s 543).
Andrea Possee (270) was running her first National and ran to form, having made decent progress and trained consistently since the autumn. She should be aiming to break into the top 200 next year. And team manager Alex Wardle was another pleased with progress as she placed 314 compared with 460 in 2009. The results also show that she took the scalp, by around 20 seconds, of Leeds City’s Veronique Marot, now 55 years old but still 3rd on the UK all-time marathon rankings with 2:25:56 from 1989.
Team manager Wardle said, “That’s sport for you. But it reflects genuine progress when we can finish 10th despite two of our top four women being forced to abandon the race. For now we’ll content ourselves with polishing the South of England trophy!”
The 2011 English National will be held at Alton Towers.
A multi-coloured golf umbrella was left at our camp. Any claimants?
Footnote: Club officials Wardle, Alistair Holford and McCarthy were back at work early Sunday morning helping at the club's annual Roding Valley Half-Marathon, held in horrible wet, cold and windy conditions. There were over 800 finishers. Paul Martelletti of Victoria Park Harriers won the men's race in just over 70 minutes, while our Bertie Powell followed up his National run by clocking 74minutes for second place.