London City Runner Met League race 5: Men & Women
Our senior men's CC squad eased to their 4th consecutive London City Runner Metropolitan League title at Perivale on Saturday, though suffering a narrow defeat on the day. Our women's team were 3rd on the day and finished the season 3rd overall. Our men's B team finished 7th of the 10 teams in Division 1. U20 Harun Abdi led our men's team in, and Lauren Stewart our women. U20 Darren Southcott finished an eye-catching 26th.
A series of remarkable performances had left our men's team well ahead of the chasing pack prior to this race, which took the pressure off us. Several of our best U23s had felt free to race elsewhere (see below) without feeling pressurised into running this race, so a few of our top B team men had their opportunity to sample A team glory.
Photos of Men's race (by T McCarthy). Photos plus video with cutting edge commentary from Michael Murphy.
Men
Conditions underfoot were mixed, with plenty of firm or icy terrain alternating with patches of sloshy mud. As is normal at Horsenden Hill, the field was the smallest of the 5 races; this time just 265 men finished - around 100 below the season peak. But the standard at the front of the race remained very high - at the very front, recent England international Andy Greenleaf (Serpentine) had a tremendous battle with Shaun Dixon (Highgate), who took the victory in the sprint.
With our Daniel Agustus feeling stiff from racing in Northern Ireland on Thursday evening (see below), it was Harun Abdi (8th, 38" behind winner Dixon) who led our men around from the start. It was a very pleasing return for the young man who ran the first two league races carrying an injury before wisely opting to allow it to clear up. Abdi will now head to the U20 National CC in a fortnight's time with a little more confidence. Tom Beedell, lying second behind Agustus in the Ken Bray Trophy for winter consistency, ran his usual solid race but, once Agustus had loosened out, he came from behind and took advantage of a mid-race error by Beedell, who surged a little too hard and early, and he eventually put 15 seconds between himself and Beedell - 11th and 15th.
For the second year running, an unofficial but accurate ranking has been compiled of individual results over these 5 races, and for the second year running Daniel Agustus has come out on top - a tremendous achievement from this very fine clubman. And Tom Beedell, who only joined us last August, finished 3rd. The two were separated by Serpentine's Hugh Torry.
This winter's revelation, Harold Wyber, ran soundly if unspectacularly over what is for him a shortish distance and finished 21st. Kevin Murphy is ending the CC season in very decent shape and was pleased with 24th. 8" behind Murphy and 5" behind Beagles' Olly Laws (34th in the Southern CC) came the ever-improving Darren Southcott in a Met PB of 26th. After running an excellent BUCS the previous weekend (see below), this was another marker which suggests that Southcott is in the process of making a step up in standard. In 32nd place, 17" behind Southcott, was Angus Holford, who run soundly but will be hoping for more mud at Parliament Hill in two weeks' time.
The time gaps were bigger than usual, and it was over a minute before our 8th man home, Matt Molloy, came in strongly in 46th, amongst a bunch of fellow M40s. For much of the race, Molloy had been racing Bertie Powell, who had again, as on several occasions in the past, forced himself to keep his "streak" of consecutive Met League races - now 43 - going despite a very bad cold. Powell finished feeling so ill that he lost around 15 places in the final downhill stretch, and collapsed on the ground once over the line. "You can put heavy weights on me, or put a train or a brick wall in the way and I will find my way to the funnel - that is Bertie Powell", gasped the 6 times Ken Bray champion, who settled for 61st place. Close behind in 63rd was Jim Roche, who ran a fine race and is having his best season for several years, illustrated by being high in the Bray Trophy ranking.
The final two places in the scoring 12 were hotly contested, and 5 of our men finished within 23" of one another. Out on top came Rob Cox (77), who felt he owed his first Scoring Twelve placing to his very controlled first lap, which felt easy to him but enabled him to then run a very strong two subsequent laps. 2" behind, M40 Gareth Cavell (79) happily grabbed the remaining place in what is a very hard 12 to break into.
With Serpentine turning out one of their strongest possible squads (with the notable absence of Nick Torry), it was surprising that our team only failed to clinch an "invincible" season by 28 points, 991 to 963. This left the overall league points situation: WGEL 5614, Serpentine 5275, Highgate 4205. A very good crowd attended the awards afterwards in the sports hall and saw Angus Holford - elected due to his consistent contributions of recent seasons - raise the silver trophy once more, making it 13 titles since we were first champions in 1988-89.
"Our performances before Christmas were remarkable. We were unstoppable," said Team Manager Terry McCarthy. "I think it establishes the template for what we need to do in future seasons - make the best possible use of our U23 track men to establish a big lead during the autumn, and hang on after Christmas." He went on to point out, "We still have plenty of work to do this season. We're looking for a top 10 in the National, and we want to make it very tough for others to beat us in the Southern 12 Stage."
Women (to be added)
Men's B team
For once, we did not complete a B team. We fielded 23 men on the start line but lost Bertie Powell's brother Jon to an ongoing calf niggle and his dad Trevor too, as he got worried about Bertie's parlous state. But with performances being so strong earlier in the season, we were well clear of the drop zone. Duathlete Andrew Clare made his first CC appearance of the season in a very decent 82nd place, and we shall also see him on Hampstead Heath. M45 Ray Dzikowski was 85th, just edging out U20 Liam Blaikie (87) who paid the price for recent heavy training put in to compensate for training missed due to exams.
We then had a big gap - four minutes - to Rob Quantrell (172), who kept a 13" gap between himself and another man who is improving all the time, M45 Martin Mack (174). We then had M55 Alistair Holford (185), a good run from Andy Smith (192), M45 Steve Lambert creeping under the fabled 200 barrier (198) and Paul Stockings (207) wryly accepting last place in the day's pecking order due partly to the absence of our consistent tail-enders and partly due to his own lack of training. "You only get out what you put in," acknowledged the current out-of-form guy. Nonethless, he checked and found he still had around 10 minutes in hand over the last finisher in the race.
Howard Williams Trophy
The Howard Williams Trophy is awarded to the best overall men's/women's club. This year, with the men's finishing order being WGEL, Serpentine, Highgate, and the women's finishing order being the reverse, the trophy was awarded jointly to all 3 clubs.
Other recent performances
Several of our men have been active in other races over the last week. At the high-quality British Universities CC Champs, Tom Phillips placed a good 39th, 2' 16" behind winner Jonny Hay. Darren Southcott had a good run for 75th, a minute behind Phillips, and Angus Holford was 128th. In the slightly shorter race for B teams, Alex Cornwell was a good 23rd and Ben Phillips 239th. In the women's race, Georgie-Lou Sales was a very good 27th, Sidnie Sales 60th, Kathrine Foy 87th, Claudia Conway 178th and Kate Stockings 274th.
Cornwell then ran 3mins 53secs for 1500m indoors in the Inter-Varsity match, and 3mins 55secs in the UK Championships yesterday. Oli Heeks ran 3mins 57secs in the McCain City Challenge in Sheffield, and has now gone off to race and train in Australia for a month.
Daniel Agustus and Andy Mariani went to Northern Ireland to run the top quality Armagh 5K on Thursday evening, where Matt Shone ran 14:28 in 2008. Mariani had a fine road running breakthrough, clocking 14:59 to pip Agustus 15:03. Their times were only good enough for 38th and 42nd in the race.
And Harold Wyber represented one of his several 2nd claim clubs, Orion Harriers, in their mob match against Ranelagh in Richmond Park, and won the race by a massive 1' 22".