Essex CC Champs: Gold for U20 Joel Doye and Senior Men’s team
The 2023 Essex Cross Country Championships at Basildon on January 8th produced some highly promising results for the future of the club’s distance squad, and continued a streak of success parallelled only with the club’s results of a century ago through the 1920s. Joel Doye won the Junior individual title, and the Senior Men’s team, led in by James Stockings in 5th, retained the trophy.
Joel Doye took the Junior Men’s individual title with a measured but ultimately commanding run. Joel had made a steady start and was in the middle of a pack of around 10 runners towards the top of the first hill, 2-3 minutes into the race. But only he and Basildon’s Jamie Rashbrook were alert to the marshals’ directions to turn right, to run the short 3km lap before the longer and hillier 5km loop, and both stole a march of around 10-20m while their left-turning challengers were turned round. Rashbrook pushed on aggressively, and had gained another 20m on Joel by the end of the first lap, but was working visibly harder, and when Joel caught him was unable to keep pace for long. The gap continued to widen and Joel eventually won by 18 seconds. Joel thus ends an historic drought: to this writer’s memory, no Woodford man has taken the Essex Junior Cross Country title in the past 20 years, though Harold Wyber, Mark Burgess, Tom Phillips, Ronnie Sparke and James Stockings all took silver as juniors in the 21st century. They have gone on to two titles, two further individual medals and countless team honours as seniors. In good time, we hope Joel will emulate them, but for now we wish him well in making the most of his final year as a junior, in the major regional and national championships to come.
The senior men’s race, won by Ilford’s (and Woodford HCA) Ahmed Abdulle started, in the words of Tom Beedell, “like a school cross country race”, both for the whistle rather than expected gun, and for the manic speed at which at least 20 competitors attacked the first straight, corner and hill. The only Woodies who went with it were James Stockings and Josh Entwistle, whose 5th and 11th place finishes respectively showed the aggressive start was entirely within their capabilities. The 2017 silver medallist James emulated his own performance from last year, though he was somewhat rueful about being beaten by two unfamiliar faces in Leigh-on-Sea’s Gus Withers (2nd) and Colchester & Tendring’s Sam Clayton (4th), who were split by last year’s silver medallist Stephen Strange of Tonbridge. Josh meanwhile was pleased to translate his staying power on the roads to the uneven and hilly (though not gloopy) grass of Basildon, despite having to focus on his own race most of the way round, with no one to stick with.
Angus Holford was pleased to go one place better than last year with his 13th place. Having started conservatively he spent most of the first lap reeling in his Colchester training partners Ram Osman and Tom Rehal. Having done so, he was kept honest by their refusal to ever be completely dropped, and managed to overhaul one more runner in the home straight. Tom Beedell had had an injury scare in the preceding week. With the team prize potentially on the line, captain Tom judged this to have healed enough for him to start and to take a similarly conservative approach, to carry him to 23rd place. Tom enjoyed being able to survey the field as the race proceeded and see that Woodford were on course for the team title. He was followed by Dan Steel. Unusually, Dan has no spring marathons planned, so he is free to run cross country on un-tired legs, and this told with his 28th place, 5 places up from this time last year.
Just behind was Tom Adolphus (29th), in his debut senior race at a championship distance. Though familiar with the Basildon course, Tom was rightly wary of the extra distance and frequency of the hills, and managed his race well, declaring it no more than ‘tough’, and he was rewarded with a place in the scoring team and resulting gold medal. It is an encouraging breakthrough to have a home-grown recently-junior athlete in this position - the first since James Stockings scored for the silver-medal-winning B team in 2015. His training partner (in the university holidays in any case) Videsh Weerakkody also started, but by his own admission went off too fast and withdrew. We look forward to having both in the scoring team in years to come, with the benefit of greater experience and training.
That closed the team with 109 points, 21 clear of second placed Southend and 48 ahead of Havering, who were more commonly our nemeses or nearest challengers in recent years. Our retaining of the title was noted at the presentation: An unnamed Woodford team member was quoted as having complained last year about the shorter 10k distance, but we had now shown we could beat all comers over the historic 12k as well. In fact, Woodford’s senior men have now taken gold in 6 and a medal in all of the last 8 championships; and gold in 9 and a medal in 14 of the last 15 stretching back to 2006.
The team was backed up by Peter Caton, whose 67th place would have ensured at least a silver or bronze team medal had any of the scoring team had to pull out, given the 120 point buffer over fourth-placed Colchester; and Alistair Holford (168th), who will now proceed to his perennial target race for the season, the National Cross Country, with a 12k cross country race under his belt already. For the squad, attention now turns to the next Met League at Welwyn Garden City in a week’s time.
Senior Men’s results: