Senior Men 5th at Welwyn Met League
The senior men’s cross-country team was light on numbers, but high on quality, at Welwyn Garden City’s Stanborough Park on 14th January. They were led in by Tom Beedell with a storming return to form in 15th place, and finished in 5th place on the day, with a score that was just 6 points worse-off but one team position better than at the previous fixture at Uxbridge. They also climbed a place to 6th in the overall league standings.
Relentless rain in the hours leading up to the race, and difficulty staying upright even at the team base (there not being a flat or dry patch of grass available) had made for a somewhat grim atmosphere leading up to the squad’s warmup. But this was nothing that could not be fixed by the cheering, and surprising, arrival of Adam Kirk-Smith. Although nursing a niggle, he had communicated to manager Tom Beedell that he would ‘risk it’, but the message had been interpreted as referring to the Southern championship, in two weeks’ time. Having the Commonwealth Games top-8 steeplechaser for an extra race was a major bonus, and to cap it, at start-time-minus-10, the rain stopped, and stayed away until the squad were all back-at-base.
Stanborough Park is a small patch of land. Barely a square-metre was left unused in producing a 2.6km lap consisting of perimeter loop and inner dog-leg, and completed three times. Unhappy memories of being caught in a major bottleneck after 800m at previous editions on this course led several squad members to resolve to start fast. Adam Kirk-Smith was quickest away of all, keeping on the front row of runners for the opening stretch, but he’d also resolved to cap his overall effort, to avoid exacerbating his injury, and also regretted his choice of 9mm spikes, meaning he rarely felt as though he exceeded warmup pace. His measured run took him to 18th place. Angus Holford and Tom Beedell had settled around 20th place after the opening half mile, but Beedell had the greater capacity to push on, storming away from Holford towards the end of the first lap, and overhauling Kirk-Smith in the second. His 15th place was his best Met performance since placing 14th at Alexandra Palace in February 2017. He had approached the previous week’s Essex championship and intervening period cautiously, to best ensure recovery of a hamstring niggle, and the rest clearly paid dividends.
Holford prefers to start more conservatively and run through the field, but was delighted with his 21st place as reward for pursuing a different strategy. Mike Waddington was close behind in 24th. In a role-reversal from earlier races this season, he had worked his way through the field steadily, though this time he just ran out of space to catch Holford. In the post-race debrief team he and Tom Adolphus reflected that, with competitor-numbers down (357 finishers in the senior men’s race, compared with 526 in November 2019), the bottleneck was not such a major issue this time. Adolphus was 50th. After a week at a training camp in the New Forest with his Cambridge University squad, which he expects to top out at 100k, this is impressively close to his lifetime best of 42nd (from Claybury in October 2021) and markedly up on his 70th+ place performances in the autumn, which shows he is on track for a strong assault on his first senior National in 5 weeks time.
Dan Steel was 64th, reporting an uneventful run, until picking off a couple of rivals who finished just ahead of him at Claybury. This was another step in the right direction of getting back to his pre-pandemic shape. Simon Beedell was unfortunate to lose a shoe, and 20 places to put it back on again, at the point when the course briefly dropped on to a concrete patch, but his 96th place was over 20 up on the previous two Met League races. Also well up on his previous Met was Peter Caton, who enjoyed the return to ‘standard’ rather than championship distance after last week’s Essex championship at Basildon, in 122nd. Fellow Vet Jon Williams was 177th. This was a solid result given he was returning to competitive action after only recently resuming regular training so he will be looking forward to seeing an improvement at the next fixture. We witnessed just this with Bertie Powell who was in considerably better shape than his injury-hindered run at Uxbridge and completed his 91st consecutive Met League in 225th position. Last in was Paul Stockings, surely the only male Woodie to have more Met League finishes (at least 150), in 315th. Paul did not find the race enjoyable, but was pleased to finish around the same competitors as usual, and ahead of 15% of the field. He was surprised to double the number of occasions that he’d been lapped by a Woodford runner at a Met and disappointed that it was Tom Beedell.
Next up for the squad is the Southern Championship, at Beckenham, on 28th January. Significant behind-the-scenes assessments of fitness and priorities are ongoing, but the managers are optimistic of assembling a stronger squad than that which finished 8th last year.