Firstly WELL DONE to ALL the HAC athletes who turned up at Uxbridge for a race on a traditional cross country course on a day with weather totally suited for winter cross country!! 19 Hillingdon Senior and Veteran ladies turned up and finished this challenging 2 lap course and for the first four and a half miles.
I confidently wrote down the finishing order of our first six ladies that makes up the 1st senior team. Running well as a pack Beverley Whitfield ran for the first time this year and finished in 50th position, closely followed by Nikki in 52nd and Heather Paterson just behind in 54th. And that is what I fully expected the first three to be having watched them pass me in that order several times! Except that our new starlet Katie Newman having discovered that cross country and the Uxbridge course especially are to her liking, had other ideas and treated the last 400m as a track race and raced past our first three and several other fast ladies to finish in 49th position and leading lady for the club! Captain Melanie Spencer and Freya made up the first team finishing in 99th and 115th positions. That gave us 135 points but unfortunately it appears that the attraction of a REAL cross country course meant that all the other teams sent strong teams and we were a disappointing 11th out of twelve teams on the day. We are 8th overall.
The second team again had HAC runners running in packs and was made up of Karen O’Rourke in 119th, Zoe two positions behind and Michaela Mayor three places later. The evergreen Pauline Fischer was in 140th and Lynn Hyde two places later. This gave us 92 points and 9th out of 12 teams in division 2. We lie 10th overall.
The C team also ran close together with Stephanie Suntong in 160th followed by Ellie in 162nd and Nastaran immediately behind. Ruth Costello finished in 172nd to complete the team. This meant we had a full C team and scored 86 points and finished 7th of the 15 teams who scored in division 3. We are 13th of 26 teams in division 3. Also running were Karen Trunkfield in 179th, Vicky Brownlee in 181st, Lucy Duncan in 188th and finishing her first cross country race Lucia Meneghelli in 190th.
In the Veterans divisions our A team consisting of Beverley, Melanie, Karen O’Rourke and Zoe finished in 8th position on the day and sit in 8th position in 12 team division 1. Our B team of Pauline, Lynn, Stephanie and Ruth are now in 4th position in division 2 following their 4th position today.
Sadly today we couldn’t field a full strength 3rd Vets team with Karen Trunkfield, Vicky Brownlee and Lucy Duncan finishing meant we finished 10th on the day and remain in tenth position in twelve team division 2 but only 2 points above the relegation position. We need full Veterans turnouts in the last two fixtures to avoid the drop. We are the ONLY club to have all 3 teams in the top two divisions. Let’s keep it that way!
So WELL DONE everyone – a good turnout and some strong performances!!. It’s just a shame that a number of the other clubs sent out strong teams and stopped us moving up the league tables as was expected.
Keep running and stay healthy!!