Five young athletes and two senior men from Herts Phoenix Athletic Club travelled to Roundhay Park, Leeds on Saturday to compete in the English National Cross Country Championships.

Fortunately the weather remained dry for the meeting, but the undulating courses for the races were made very tough by the large amount of rain and snow that had fallen over recent weeks.  This had left several parts still under water and as the afternoon wore on it became increasingly muddier for the later races.

 

Megan Breen (Sandringham School) was the first Club athlete in action running 3,000 metres in the under 13 girls race to finish in a time of 15:16 in 284th place out of the 417 who finished.  Edward Shepherd (Bishops Stortford High School) ran very strongly to finish in 70th place out of 308 finishers in 21:56 over the 6,000 metres course for under 17 men.  He was followed by Emily Ruane (St Mary’s Catholic School) and Mary Gough (Presdales) who put in excellent performances to finish just a second apart in 16:01 and 16:02 in 83rd and 89th places respectively after running 4,000 metres in the under 15 girls race, in which there were 360 finishers. Twelve year old Jake Barraclough (Heath Mount) started the under 13 boys race very steadily and after about the first 1,000 metres was lying in 45th place but then started to work his way through the field to finish very strongly in an excellent 21st place in 12:07 out of the 374 boys who completed the 3,000 metre course. 

 

In the final race of the day Lee Reynolds and Bryn Reynolds joined more than 1,400 other athletes who contested the Senior Mens race over 12,000 metres having to tackle the strength sapping Hill 60 (named as a memorial to the soldiers of Leeds who died at Hill 60 near Ypres in the Great War) twice and then as they  worked their way through the hundreds of lapped runners on their last lap having to tackle Hill 60 for the third time before sprinting  over the final 200 metres of the course.  After the several thousands of runners finishing before them in the earlier races, this had been turned into a mud bath, but they finished creditably in 43:44 and 43:58, giving them 158th & 171st place respectively.

 

Adrian Newman, Cross Country Co-ordinator