Met League race 5: Young Athletes

The winter season’s last Met League fixture, at Alexandra Palace, was a cold, breezy and muddy affair but what the aficionados would call ‘proper cross country’. Sadly, Woodford’s young athletes were more notable by their absence rather than their presence but those that could turn out gave a good account of themselves – the U11 Woodford WASPS in particular.

Results

The mixed gender U11 race took a single lap around the lower field and the old horse racing course; out into the breeze and back to the finish with the tailwind. Max Chinn and Jimmy Geller stayed near the front and were together for the mile (below) before Max kicked on coming off the old race track finishing in 4^th place, 12 seconds behind the winner and 12 seconds ahead of Jimmy in 6^th.  Meanwhile, behind these two, a cheery Holly Hudson (above with Max and Jimmy) was scrapping with the boys for the placings and finished an excellent 2^nd girl and 16^th overall.

In the U13 Boys’ race, despite the withdrawal of Sidnie Ward (injury) and Fred Taylor (illness), we still mustered a scoring team with Liam Waldron leading the way with 13^th place; Rhys Edwards had another good run for 30^th with the duo of Jack Simmons and Woody Hudson ably finishing together in 43^rd and 44^th; a fine performance for the bottom year runners in a field of over 50 runners.

For the rest, we could only muster U15G Siena Taylor and U17M Harry Cavell who finished 17^th and 12^th respectively in their races. Both of these races were unexpectedly directed up the steep hill in front of the Palace on their first lap rather than undertaking the short lap first.  Getting the pain out of the way early seemed to have no detrimental effect on Siena who made up good ground after the hill and finished strongly well up in the middle of a evenly strung out field who were all trounced by Shaftesbury’s run-away winner who was 47seconds up on the second placed finisher; three quarters of the field were U15s.

For the U17Ms, Harry Cavell had the highest placing of his 5 Met League finishes this winter, picking up 12^th place, a minute and 46 down on the winner who was half a minute ahead of his nearest chaser.  With Joe Geller nursing sore arms after inoculations, this finish won’t do Harry’s prospects for the Frank Webb Trophy any harm.

Overall, this season, the U13 Boys were the highest finishers of our teams with 6^th place in the league, the U17W were 8^th, the U17M 11^th and the U13Gs 13th. However much of this was done on the back of incomplete teams in each race. We could do so much better with a good turn out – perhaps some of those training in our groups should ask themselves what they are training for if they are not racing.