English National CC Championship: Young Athletes
It was a small band of our young athletes that made the long trip up to Leeds for the National Cross Country Championships in Roundhay Park on Saturday. Ronnie Sparke again stole the headlines with his 4th place in the Junior Men’s race, although competing for the headlines with him was James Stockings, who came a fine 17th out of nearly 400 runners in the U15 Boys race.
After the heavy rain and strong winds of the previous few days, the runners were afforded some respite as the conditions were relatively calm and, despite a few flakes early on, the threatened snow never materialised. The surface of the course was mostly smooth, close cropped grass with occasional sections of heavy, cloying mud. The terrain could charitably be described as undulating as it wound its way round the park, but the course included a vicious sixty foot hill and having descended it on the way out on each lap, it had to be climbed on each return to the finish area; it proved to be the pick of the viewing places for the spectators.
James Stockings was our only U15B runner and after a cautious start, worked his way through the field to be the highest placed Essex runner, just pipping Southend’s Oliver Kyriades to the line by a couple of seconds. Sidnie Sales (43) was also the first Essex runner home in the U17W event, where team-mate Kate Stockings was 145th of the 189 finishers.
The U17M race was won by South of England champion Shaftesbury Barnet’s Richard Goodman, with more than a thirty second cushion over the second-placed runner. Liam Blaikie (211) was disappointed with his run in this event having missed a chunk of the last month’s training whilst recovering from a virus and was still not fully fit. Becky Hewitt (47) meanwhile was pleased to finish the U20W race having suffered from a heavy cold during the week.
It was in the Junior Men’s race that we had our best turn out, with all 5 of our runners finishing the 10k course and the team coming 6th. Belgrave’s Nick Goolab (winner at Parliament Hill last month) looked a comfortable winner here with a 16 second margin over second-placed James Wilkinson (Leeds City AC) who was, in turn, 6 seconds up on Notts AC’s Ben Norris. Ronnie was seven seconds down from the bronze medal position and whilst no doubt disappointed to miss out on a medal again, fourth place here must represent progress back to being fully race fit after injury last year. The rest of our team packed well with Omar Mansour (65th) next in with Gavin Lewis looking stronger as the race progressed in 71st. Alex Cornwell was 2 places back with 5th man, Darren Southcott in 105th. Darren expressed disappointment with his run afterwards but as a bottom year runner, his fighting spirit will stand him on good stead next year when the championships will return to Alton Towers.