London Heathside

[Paul Lemmon]

At last! The snow has gone (though I guess it may yet come back) and races took place as planned, so for the first time this year I have a decent sized set of results to report on.

The main event of course was the delayed Middlesex Cross Country Champs at Ruislip on Saturday. Heathside had runners in 7 of the 9 races and made a pretty good start with full teams finishing in both Under 13 events. The Girls finished well down the strongest field of the day outside the senior events, though Genevieve only narrowly missed out on the top 12 placing which would have given her a chance of running in the Inter Counties. The Boys were more successful however with both Connor and Max R making it into the hallowed 12, though they will still presumably need a couple of others to drop out for them to get a run on the day. Sadly however, in a ridiculously close 4 way team battle, they ended up 4th and thus missed out on medals despite being only 6 points behind the winners. If it was 4 to score like it always used to be they would have been an even closer 2nd.

Unexpectedly we didn’t have a full team of Under 15 Boys, but Joe and Miron at least had a good race with each other in the middle of the field. As expected however, our best individual performance of the day came in the Under 20 Men’s race which Mehretab won by nearly a minute. He should have a much tougher race in the Southern Champs next week, but will certainly be hoping for a very high finish there too on current form.

The Senior Women were next to race and, while it was disappointing that we only had 5 competitors given the large numbers we’ve had at most races this season, disappointing was the last word that could be used to describe the performances of those who were there. Sue had another excellent run to finish 4th, albeit well adrift of the top 3, and should now get selected for the Inter Counties event. Andrea may well join her there after a top 10 finish while both Jackie and Karen had their best races of the season so far. Ruth too ran well and would have ensured the team of silver medals even if any of the others had failed to finish. Given the absentees, it was an excellent performance to push Highgate so close for gold, though if Anna still ran first claim for us rather than West 4 we would have beaten them by the perfect margin of 1 point!

Finally it was the men’s turn and here we had a much better turnout which led to a better than expected result too, with a closer 2nd place even than the women. George and Martin had terrific runs to make the top 10 and possible inter-counties selection, while Ed’s form continues to improve apace. John performed solidly as normal and Richard ran particularly well given the hamstring problems which have affected his training over the last few weeks. Sergio completed the scoring 6, holding off Norman comfortably in the end. If any of Andy, Dan or myself had been less affected by our recent illnesses/injuries and thus been running at our best, we may even have managed to edge ahead of Highgate. However the result was probably fair as, for reasons unknown, Highgate’s highest finisher didn’t count for their team and they would have been much further ahead of us if he had. Results of this and other events as follows:

Middlesex County Cross Country Championships, Ruislip, 23/01/10:
Under 13 Boys (3k approx):
11th Connor O’Shea 12m 19s
12th Max Robertson 12m 26s
15th Max Heap 12m 36s
18th Johnny Naylor 13m 00s
26th Jasper Crockford 13m 13s

Team results (3 to score);
1st Harrow 32
2nd Thames Valley 33
3rd St Mary’s Richmond 35
4th London Heathside 38

Under 13 Girls (3k approx):
13th Genevieve Weston 14m 05s
30th Harriet Mackinney 15m 48s
36th Lily Beckford 16m 54s
37th Ellen Bolger 16m 54s

Team results (3 to score):
1st St Mary’s Richmond 12
2nd Enfield & Haringey 15
3rd Ealing 26
7th London Heathside 79

Under 15 Boys (4k approx):
19th Joe Silva 15m 58s
20th Miron Woldemichael 16m 01s

Under 17 Men (6k approx):
27th Alex Beattie-Child 27m 05s

Under 20 men (8k approx):
1st Mehretab Solomon 28m 03s
18th Jay Beattie-Child 40m 33s

Senior Women (8k approx):
4th Sue Rust 34m 43s
10th Andrea Devine 35m 48s
13th Jackie Wastell 37m 33s
17th Karen Levene 38m 22s
29th Ruth Miller 40m 55s

Team results (4 to score):
1st Highgate 37
2nd London Heathside 44
3rd Serpentine 82

Senior Men (12k approx):
5th George Stewart 43m 45s
8th Martin Potter 44m 00s
18th Ed Samuel 45m 58s
25th John Flahive 46m 53s
27th Richard Browne 47m 13s
31st Sergio Di Noto 47m 34s
36th Norman Mitchell 48m 13s
42nd Andy Owen 49m 01s
50th Paul Lemmon 50m 27s
53rd Dan Miller 50m 38s
55th Pete Crockford 51m 06s
81st Carl Heap 56m 05s
88th Alan Dickson 57m 20s
99th Nik Skipper 60m 44s

Team results (6 to score):
1st Highgate 111
2nd London Heathside 114
3rd Harrow 126

Brighton 5k Parkrun, Brighton, 23/01/10:
18th Mark Derry 19m 28s

British Masters Indoor Pentathlon Championships, Lee Valley, 24/01/10:
Men 55-59:
3rd Adrian Essex
60M Hurdles 12.42s
Long Jump 4.12m
Shot Put 7.87m
High Jump 1.33m
800 Metres 3m 51.89s

Total 2578 points

Vets A.C. Indoor Track & Field Championships, Lee Valley, 24/01/10:
60 Metres Bill Birmingham 9.48s
800 Metres Bill Birmingham 2m 41.38s