Met League 5: Seniors: Nathan gets Wright in the thick of it
Woodford’s men finished 4th and women 12th in the Met League after 22 runners, led in by Nathan Wright and Emily Caton respectively, navigated the muddiest iteration of the Trent Park course yet. With a late switch to the course removing the sections of forest path and compact heathland, and substituting in two descents and ascents of a heavily cambered field, the course was even more dominated by shin-deep mud than usual and there were no sections where anyone could get a rhythm going.
As the ladies approached the start line the rain began and a wet, muddy, and hilly (but short) 5ish-mile course lay ahead. First home was Emily Caton who went out fast and made the mud look easy! As she tries to balance her A-Level studies with training, Emily was pleased with her impressive 31st place finish. Our second lady was Alicia McArdell in 65th. With an ongoing hip injury, this is down on her usual placing but the team were incredibly grateful that she was willing to give the course a go and help them close a team. Alicia was closely followed by fellow club stalwart Zoe Watson in 75th with Kate Stockings not far behind in 80th. This was Kate’s highest position of the season- spurred on by some new 12mm spikes and the psychological effect of far fewer fields to navigate than on the old course.
Regular racer Katie Olert was next in and finished in 156th place. Kate and Katie are the two ever-present ladies of the season but with Katie expecting her 4th child at the end of June, her feat is particularly impressive. As she takes a break from racing following the end of the Met Leagues, the team wish her the very best during her ‘running mat leave’.
Gill Whelan closed the team. As the training for her debut London marathon in April begins to pay off, Gill had her highest ever Met League finish in 158th place.
And so, for the first time in many seasons, the women had a full team at each Met League fixture of the season. Although pleasing, this achievement doesn’t quite do justice to the depth that has been added to the squad in recent years. 16 ladies have donned green and white for a Met League this season- a huge increase on previous years. Nine of those are new to the club or senior team this year and we hope to continue this growth throughout 2025 and beyond. Whilst pleased with their 12th place finish in this league this year, the squad know that if they can continue to go from strength to strength, they’ll become increasingly competitive- something all look forward to. As the women look towards the road and relay season, a huge thank you to everyone who has been part of our Met League teams!
Across the two senior races, Nathan Wright fared best of all with 15th place in the men’s race, also taking first place among U20s in the results by a staggering two-and-a-half minutes. This is an an excellent show of confidence and strength two weeks ahead of the National Cross Country.
Tom Beedell was 19th, taking it cautiously in light of the glute injury that caused him to miss the Southern championships. Impressively, Tom was Woodford’s second scorer in all five races, behind four different clubmates. Tom Adolphus was 24th, exactly matching his performance at Welwyn, bouncing back from his cold-afflicted run at the Southern, and pleased to collect the accolade of beating champions Highgate’s 12th man home.
Dan Steel was next, in 42nd, his best place in a Met for over a year. He hurtled past and put at least 20m into Angus Holford in the second of the four descents, and kept pulling away strongly. Angus was 56th, reflecting that he had overdone his strategy to start fast “to stay out of trouble”, and lacked the same confidence to attack the downhills. Nate Harding in 73rd was the 3rd U20 on the day, a marked improvement on the Welwyn race that, like for Nathan, should give him confidence for the Junior National Championship. Harold Wyber was 84th, and took advantage of the natural spa presented by the duckpond immediately on finishing.
Vlad Kalinins’ 133rd place was over 50 places improvement from his last Met at Perivale, and gave us three in the top-10 for U20s; a very encouraging sign for future seasons. Within a minute in the now dense field were Simon Beedell in 145th; about on a par with his 2025 record, and Bertie Powell, who was 166th; pushing through a tightening calf over the last mile to close out his best season-average for the last three years. Despite U20 Godwinner Nkebani’s protestations about the distance and the mud, his 209th place marked the third time this season he has scored for our A-team, showing he is clearly at home at this level.
Chris Hogg closed the 12-man team in 236th, marking the first time he has scored for a senior A team. This placed us 6th, and 4th A-team, on the day. We had been snapping at the heels of London Heathside, but they scored big to finish 3rd on the day and over the season. We in turn substantially extended our lead over Thames Valley Harriers, but it wasn’t immediately clear this would be enough to secure our 4th place in the league: Highgate and Victoria Park had come into the final fixture separated by just 72 points, and both went all out with strong teams hoping to defend or gain the title. Highgate prevailed with 12-in-25, but this effort carried their B teams to 4th and 5th on the day, in the end not enough to overhaul us.
Our own B-team secured promotion from Division 3 after finishing second in the league. Earning no silverware but much kudos for this feat were Ben Stockill (304th), Asif Hussain (342nd),
Richard Hogg (355th) and Alistair Holford (376th). Asif has only been running for a year after multiple surgeries yet impressively he, Ben and Richard are three of the 9 ever-presents across the Met this year (along with Dan Steel, Simon Beedell, Tom Beedell, Bertie Powell, Godwinner Nkebani, and Chris Hogg). The others all reported being mainly pleased to get round. They noted, through a range of cheerfully salted to heavily gritted teeth, both the character-and-strength building nature of racing in such tough conditions.
Caption
Dan Steel (166 points) leads the Ken Bray Trophy by 6 points from Tom Adolphus. Ever-present this year, serial winner Dan has been outscored by Tom, who has missed one race, by an average of 3.2 points each time they have faced each other. By current projections, this means that with three races remaining we may be heading for the first new name on the trophy since the pandemic. However, both need to turn out at all remaining races for the title to be in their hands. Another past champion, Simon Beedell, lurks just a further 8 points back.
The team will reconvene for the National Cross Country Championships at Parliament Hill in two weeks time. Experience suggests there will be patches of respite from the mud, but with the race over 12k versus Trent Parks’ closer-to-7-than-8k, we may expect to be equally caked by the finish.