The Northern Cross Country Championships took place at Bedale on Saturday on a very varied course which had both very dry sections and some horrendous muddy sections for the mudlarks.
The younger age groups did all their racing on the dry section of the course. Lottie Langan was again the leading performer from the club with a fine 4th place in the under 13 girl’s race as a tremendous sprint finish took her past two other runners in the last 100m. Kaitlin Keens (121st) and Annabel Coxon (132nd) also took part in this race. Isaac Bastow in 69th place lead the under 13 boy’s team to 15th place in the team event with William Chalk (84th), Ian Gaskin (88th), William Keens (103rd), Isaac Morris (109th) and Miles Watson (140th) ensuring that the club had a good turnout in this race. The under 15s had 4 runners from the club taking part with Inez Khaddi (80th) leading home Lucy Gaskin (105th) and Clementine Tighe (134th) in the girls race whilst Luca Mastrolonardo came 42nd in the boy’s event.
The older juniors and the seniors ran the extended lap which had some extremely muddy sections that was half way up to the runners knees in some places. Tommy Shaw overcome a lost shoe to come 42nd in the under 17 men’s race as he bravely carried on whilst wearing only one shoe. Angus McMillan continued his comeback from injury with 8th place in the under 20 race with Archie Lawson coming 48th in the same race.
Charlotte Mason had a fine run in the senior women’s race to come 24th. Giles Chalk in 238th place lead home the senior men’s team who came 34th in the team race as Ben Francis (287th), Ed Mezzetti (417th), Mike Raynes (419th), Dave Lancaster (457th), Alex Boynton (460th) and Peter Hanson (466th) also took part.
Five of our members ran in the St Aidan’s Beast trail race near Temple Newsam which probably wasn’t the flattest or driest trail race given its name. Nick Elliott was first home from the club in 41st place with 50.46 whilst George Summerson (51.28), Helen Bowerman (69.25), Amanda Selvaratnem (69.55) and Diane Zbadynski (76.09) also completing the race.
Conditions were much more agreeable indoors. Rob Shipley came 4th in men’s 400m at the Scottish Indoors Chamiponships with 48.64s. After a slowish opening lap Rob had just a bit too much to do on the last bend to steal a medal, however a solid set of three runs puts Rob in good shape for the Nationals with more racing under his belt. Alex Botterill ran a good time of 1.17.99 over 600m.
Many of our younger athletes ran good times in Saturday’s 5k parkruns. Tabby Todd came 2nd at Easingwold in 22.18 with Emily Rycroft coming 3rd at Dalby Forest in 22.54. Joe O’Brien came 1st at Castle Howard in 17.17 nearly 5 minutes ahead of his dad, Barry. Holly Moss also came 1st on the Knavesmire in 21.30. Paul Goble then proved that the veterans from the club can also run well as he came 2nd at New Earswick in 21.41. One day after running the Northern Cross Country Championships Isaac Morris came 2nd in the York Junior Parkrun in 8.08 with Nina Hopkins being 2nd female runner in 8.35.