Senior and Vets Cross Country News 4th-5th Dec 2021

Exactly 12 committed senior men managed 7th place at the third Met League of the season at Uxbridge. They were led home by James Stockings (19th), and with illness and on-the-day injury knocking out 3 of our expected top 5 scorers it fell to Trevor Powell (374th) to close the scoring team. Elsewhere there was V60 Essex cross-country bronze for Richard Holland at Writtle, and a marathon PB for Julian Russell, in 2:52:48 in Valencia. An accident on the A406 had scuppered some of Woodford’s women’s travel plans, leaving just Alica McArdell and Zoe Watson able to run and finish. Alicia’s 30th returned her close to her career-high 23rd from Claybury this year, and Zoe’s 63rd was another strong consistent showing. Illness intervened to stop Claybury-winner Tom Frith's planned assault on the Highgate monopoly, so our lead man on the day was James Stockings. Lacking sharpness having missed two weeks of training recently, and disappointed to hear on asking that the river crossing would, indeed, be wet, James still started aggressively, going through halfway in 14th. Despite describing himself as 'crawling' the last quarter, James' gap to next man in Angus Holford (32nd) was widening all the time. Angus had himself taken a week out to manage a calf strain, which paid off as he completed the race with no concerns. Unfortunately, he had a ringside seat to witness the misfortunes of Tom Adolphus, who rolled his ankle in the tight woodland section; and Jack Gooch, whose own calf did pop mid-race, despite his best precautions. Rhys Edwards had made a fast start and made the most of an impressively quick downhill style, and was unlucky to miss his senior Met League PB by 1 place in 64th. Bertie Powell recovered from a painful plantar fasciitis and hamstring condition that had persisted for 4 weeks to come 71st. A trio of Ken Bray Trophy winners followed them in. Reigning champion Tom Beedell in 74th was followed by Simon Beedell in 107th, then Daniel Steel in 123rd. Tom finished reflecting on the large differences in position that result from small differences in pace in such a packed field, while Dan narrowly held on to an extra point in this year’s competition by holding off our next man Jon Williams in 124th. Jon himself was much-improved over Welwyn, a benefit from not finishing work half an hour before the race this time. Our next two finishers, Peter Caton (145th) and Tony Pamphilon (234th) had both been intending to target the Essex Vets championships earlier in the day, but without the prospect of a complete team there generously passed on pursuing their individual aspirations to support the senior team at Uxbridge. Both were rewarded with massive improvements on the previous Met League, and the gratitude of the team managers for preventing the team dipping into ‘last place + 1’ as our closing scorers. Paul Stockings (332nd) is now on 155 Senior Met Leagues and counting. The aforementioned Trevor Powell’s sprint finish for 374th shows he lives by the mantra that every point counts. Unfortunately, on the day it was impossible for the team to recover from losing the points of three potentially high-performing members and still mount a competitive challenge for the match. Thoughts now turn to the Essex cross-country championships in Basildon on 8th January, where the senior men will need the maximum possible turnout to wrestle the title back from Havering.

Results:

https://www.metleague.run/results/race-3-2021-uxbridge-results-4-12-2021/