A number of our athletes represented North Yorkshire Schools in an Inter County match in a great “country estate” setting in Cumbria – their equivalent of Harewood House. Fortunately it was Saturday, and they got the races finished before the storms. Although Cumbria dominated many of the races, in the Year 7 Boys it was Isaac Stabler 1st and Josh Sandwell 2nd, a terrific performance on a very tough course, 800m longer than advertised through a map production error. We also had Lucas Stabler 20th, Ian Gaskin 49th, Luca Mastrolonardo 22nd, Tommy Shaw 27th, Archie Lawson 15th, Toby Antcliff 26th. For the girls, the Year 7 also faced the tough over-distance course, but very good results for Martha Sigsworth 16th and Ellie Johnson 18th. In older age groups, we had Issie Nicholls 11th, Lucy Gaskin 38th, Holy Moss 30th.
On Sunday, the PECO cross country league at Leeds was one of the few events to survive the storm, and conditions were horrendous, mud and driving rain. Our youngsters were encouraged to not go, but some insisted they wanted to. Lottie Langan won the secondary age race (reduced to half the normal distance because of the conditions). In the primary age race, Lucy Gilbertson was 2nd girl, Aimee O’Keefe 4th, Nina Hopkins 7th, Kate Setchell and Sophie Williams together 8th and Sophie Horsfall-Samb 23rd whilst for the boys Ollie Wright came 4th. A great achievement to want to run in that, and to get round reasonably happily. A heavy hail storm before the senior race turned a wet course into a water logged one with Mike Raynes battling round another race shortened in distance to 4 miles as he came 123rd in 32.34.
Racing indoors was probably much more agreeable because not even Storm Ciara could stop the indoors season. Dan Cheeseman ran an indoor 1500m PB of 3.53.32.
14 of our members did parkrun this weekend with Giles Chalk being quickest with 17.40 at Heslington. Sally Wade was the fastest female parkrunner from the club with 24.44. Well done to Annabelle Coxon who along with 12 other children braved Storm Ciara on Sunday morning to come first in the York Junior Parkrun in 9.25.