Seniors and U20 at Southern CC: Storming runs from Phillips & Beedell
The Southern Cross Country Championships returned to Beckenham Place Park, Lewisham, for a second consecutive visit. In the vanguard of the small Woodford senior/U20 team were Joel Doye, 22nd in the Junior Men, Suzanne Phillips, 32nd in the Senior Women, and Tom Beedell, 37th in the Senior Men. The Senior Men’s team finished 10th.
Despite organizers’ efforts to include extra or longer loops within each lap, and because of attempts to reduce the prevalence of lapping in the Senior Men’s race, all the races came up short of the advertised distances. The removal of long stretches of gravel path combined with slightly softer grass and patches of mud that were entirely absent last year, made choice of footwear more of a strategic issue, but there were no complaints or regrets after the race.
Before the Junior Men’s race, Essex Champion Joel Doye and coach John Stow had quietly declared a target of top 20. Joel settled into around 25th place, and reflected that he didn’t push on quite enough in the middle of the race, and the gap from his cluster of around 7 runners to those up ahead grew a little too wide. He overhauled 3 runners in the final 400m sweep downhill and drag uphill, and in the end was 22nd, only 5 seconds off 20th place.
In the Senior Women’s race, Suzanne Phillips started fast, attempting to settle into a higher position that might come naturally, but then be dragged along at a similar pace. This strategy paid off, with her 32nd place just one below her lifetime best in this championship from 2016. Alicia McArdell was 101st and happy with her performance, hindered by her back cramping up during the race.
The Senior Men’s managers had had high hopes for getting a ‘dream team’ involving Ed Shepherd, Tom Frith, Phil Norman and Adam Kirk-Smith together for a crack at our first team medals in this championship since 2010, but unfortunately, all for independently very good reasons, none made the start line. It was Josh Entwistle who led out the Woodford team in the early kilometres, closely tracked and then overhauled by Tom Beedell, who held his top-40 position all race, and had a storming run to take a lifetime best position of 37th. The multiple Ken Bray trophy winner displayed a cool head after realizing mid-race that his chip was in his pocket, and not round his ankle. In the closing metres, he removed the chip and with a sweeping motion held it at ankle-level as he crossed the line.
Josh later reflected that a more conservative start, which he had planned, would have been better, but his 70th position was a solid performance in his debut senior Southern. Angus Holford was 65th, having worked his way up from around 75th after the first lap, and overtaking Josh on the final steep downhill with around 1km to go. Angus was delighted to be 9 places better than last year, and to take his best position since 2016. Next in was Tom Phillips in 107th. The former Southern 1500m champion was finishing strongly and was disappointed to run out of track and miss out on the top 100. Regretting the race being under-distance when advertised at 10 times his specialist event is testament to the strength coming out of his intense current marathon training.
Beckenham resident Dan Steel was 145th and enjoyed the run-out at his local course; while Simon Beedell, who finished 211th, had no major personal reflections, but was pleased to contribute to the team element, closing the team in a highly creditable 10th place. Although 2 places down on last year, we were 2nd Met League and first Essex club on the day, with us taking the highly-satisfying scalps of Met League rivals London Heathside and Victoria Park, and (a lot more comprehensively) Essex challengers Havering and Southend.
Congratulations should also go to second-claimer and longstanding member James Stockings, who finished 31st and was 6th man for the Hercules Wimbledon team that won bronze, with a score of just 125 points, behind winners Highgate Harriers (101) who edged out Tonbridge (103). Woodford’s bronze-winning teams of 2008 and 2010 accumulated well over 200 points and closed in outside the top 55 both times. The compression of the medal-winning scores over time seems symptomatic of an increasing concentration of top runners in clubs and training groups in regional super-clubs, akin to the big-city clubs, with large catchment areas, in the Midlands and North of England that have for a longer time disproportionately dominated the team results in the National championships. For the record, our four missing men would have had to contribute a cumulative score of around 23 (depending on the exact sequence within the Wimbledon scorers) or less for Woodford to have medalled. This is a remote enough chance that no one should rue the day, but would not be impossible to achieve in future.