A BIG thanks and well done to the 12 ladies who made the long trip down to Essex to compete on a firm but hilly Claybury in the sunshine and occasional odd rain shower and a field of 163 athletes!!
Accompanied all the way round by her trusty water bottle Nikki Penty-Alvarez led the team home in 47th position, followed by Heather Paterson in 65th, and captain Mel Spencer 11 positions later. The rest of the first team packed well together with Zoe Dobbs in 90th, Freya Hollingsworth in 93rd and Elise Delgrange 2 places afterwards. This gave the A team 98 points and an uncomfortable 11th place in the 12 team top division.
Karen O’Rourke led the second team home in 99th position, followed by coach Pauline Fischer in 116th, Alice Coburn in 138th, Nastaran Sepanj in 143rd and the welcome return of Pauline Smith in 154th. This gave the B team a total of 56 points and lie 8th of 12 teams in division 2.
Lucy Duncan scored all the points for the third team finishing in 163rd place.
In the Vets category our A team lie 7th in the 10 top division, but sadly our aim of getting the second team (who were relegated last season) back into division 1 looks challenging as they are currently bottom of division 2. We did not have enough runners to record any points for our C team.
In short the ladies who turned up did very well under the circumstances but we have received a number of promises to participate in the second fixture at Wormwood Scrubs in 4 weeks time and Mel and I are hoping that these are honoured otherwise all the work in recent seasons to elevate all the teams to their current high levels could be undone.
Keep running and stay uninjured!!!!
