Metropolitan CC League race 1: Young Athletes

Dampness, the prospect of rain, mild and still conditions, abundant overripe blackberries on hard-to-reach brambles and beginnings of a carpet of russet and yellow leaves on the ground; surely ripe conditions for the winter’s first Active Training World Metropolitan League. As the host club, we were keen for a good turnout from our young athletes at Claybury on Saturday; they didn’t disappoint as we had good numbers in all races and some encouraging results with five single-figure placings.

Results

Some photos

The result of the day came from Canaan Solomon who won the U15/17M event with a strong finish to catch and pass Enfield & Haringey’s two Asgodom brothers in the last 150m (the second of these on the short hill to the finish line) to win in 15’32” by 2 seconds. Isabella Hoy showed that she wasn’t daunted by moving up from the U13s with a fine 3^rd place in the U15/17W age group; she was closely followed home by our second-claimer Anna Clark who grabbed a determined 4^th place 12” behind Isabella’s 16’26”. Our other single figure placings came from Alicia McArdle (9^th in 16’55”) in the same race, Alfie Poole (8^th in U13Bs) and Kyesha Robinson (8^th in U13Gs).

Encouragingly from the Woodford perspective, we had 29 runners out for this fixture, the highest number for at least the last four years and 15 of our runners were making their cross country debuts for the club. It was also heartening to see that the field sizes seemed to be significantly larger than in previous years with 84 U15/17M finishers whilst the smallest race (U13G) still had 47.

In the U15/17M race, we fielded 10 finishers and therefore 2 complete teams. After Canaans’s first place, we had to wait a minute and three quarters before Daniel Rowden (24^th) and Perry Rowan (26^th) came home with James Wakefield (also adjusting well to moving up an age group) in 36^th and closing the team. It was a welcome sight to see Daniel testing his legs over this uneven terrain after a couple of injury hit years in which he has nevertheless nursed his legs to 1’53.75 over 800m. The second team comprised Owen Armstrong (39^th), Harry Cavell (55^th), Oliver Schonle (74^th) and Josh Tucker (81^st), who (with Harry’s exception) were all making their debuts. Chris Hogg (82^nd) and Jack Shury (83^rd) also finished in the largest young athlete race of the day. Our A team was 4^th and our B team 15^th .

The team performance of the day was from the U13Gs who finished with 4 in 20, narrowly ahead of Shaftsbury’s girls who had 4 in 32. The U15/17Ws who closed out with 4 in 13 for a score of 29 might reasonably have expected to win on the day but TVH with 4 in 11 just nipped in ahead. Jodi Ratcliff in 13^th closed our U15/17W team score, following up closely on Isabella’s 3^rd, Anna’s 4^th and Alicia’s 9^th placings and with 49 seconds covering the four of them. We could also have had a second complete team in this age group with just one more Woodford runner on the start line; the trio of Rosie Poole (17^th), Abbie Dell (33^rd) and Renée Fonseca (52^nd and making her debut) will be on the lookout for support in the next fixture.

The U13 Girls team were led home by Kyesha Robinson in 8^th; Mia Hirons was 9 seconds down in 10^th after completing the first lap up in 4^th position. Megan Caswell (18^th) and Millie Finch (whose smile seemingly never left her face the whole way round) in 20^th closed the team. Then came an uncertain looking Lacey Fuhr in 37^th, perhaps wondering what she had let herself in for but then enjoying the satisfaction of finishing after a period of post-race contemplation.

For the U13 Boys team, Alfie Poole had some good support to complement his 8^th place; Joe Geller ran well again for 10^th and for time traded places with Alfie and should be well satisfied finishing only 4 seconds down on him. David Badmas in 24th professed disappointment but a self-critical approach can also fire determination to improve. With Max Wintle having to retire with a sore shin after the first lap, it was left to other new boys to round off Woodford’s representation with George King (42^nd), Zain Idris (48^th) and Max Holmes (48^th) all pleased to have got the experience under their belts; our team was 4^th in this race.

Overall, this was a satisfying start to the winter season and the good turnout bodes well and whilst the prospect of rain became a reality during the young athlete races, by the end of the afternoon, Claybury was bathed in sunshine and the autumn colours were beginning to show themselves.