Up to the Challenge
U15 Theo Creed (left) added yet another accolade to the highlights-list of his remarkable young career when he won the Liverpool Cross Challenge in Sefton Park on 22 November by 11 seconds, covering the (approx) 3Km course in 9:33.
Impressively he finished ahead of athletes who had previously beaten him at the English Schools Cross Country Championships earlier this year (where he won bronze) and the English Schools Athletics Champs over 1500m (where he finished in seventh).
In the same race James Fraser finished in 17th, with Max Harrison in 52nd. Anna Wait was 11th in the U15 Girls race.
Max Barckhahn and Harry Allen were 61st and 86th respectively in the U17 Men’s race, while Pancho Panchev, using the race as a warm-up for representing Bulgaria in the European Cross-Country Championships in Portugal, was 74th in the U20 Men’s race. Despite a back niggle flaring up, and train cancellations and delays conspiring against him, so that he only made it to Sefton Park fifteen minutes before the start.
One down, just another nine to go!
Andrew Penney finally achieved his goal of going under 14:00 over 5K when he clocked 13:56 at the Friday Night Under the Lights race in Battersea Park on 28 November. In doing so he became the first to break Chairman Dave Clarke’s stranglehold on the entire set of Senior Club distance records from 1500m to the Marathon.
As Andrew freely admits, at 13:57 this was perhaps the ‘softest ‘ record to target, since Dave rarely raced over 5K (5 Miles being the norm on his heyday). In fact he had no idea until recently that he held the record at all, until a set of results was unearthed from a General Portfolio Newcastle City Centre Race in March 1989 stacked with stars of the day, including Tim Hutchings, Steve Cram and Steve Ovett.
Masterful
At the British Masters 5K Road Championships in Battersea Park on 30 November Simon Wade finished in 39th (9th M45) in 16:38. James Hamilton (34th M50) ran 19:47, Tom Cheetham (21st M55) 20:41, and Peter Collins (25th M55) 21:26. Peter Giles won the M80 race in 24:13, while Club distance coach Tony was 20th M70 in 31:37.
Above left: Anastasia and Cassie; and right, Peter Giles
In the Women’s event Anastasia Hancock finished in 44th (10th W40) in 20:03, with Wenjia (Cassie) Chen in 64th (13th W35) in 20:31. 2nd-claimer Caroline Helder was the 11th W60 home in 23:23; while Anna Garnier, also running for her first claim club, Thames Hare & Hounds on this occasion, won the W70 race in 22:50.
Ruby Anniversary
Match 2 of the Surrey Cross Country League on 15 November marked a return to Beckenham Place Park for Ruby Carter who announced her arrival at the Club this time last year with an exceptional fourth place over this challenging course. This year she went one better, finishing third behind the two formidable Herne Hill athletes, Lucy Jones and Molly Smith. Despite taking a wrong turn at one point, she says, 'I settled into my rhythm, worked through the gears, got the legs going and had a good finish. I really enjoyed it'. Once again her scoring team-mates were Niamh Thompson, Poppy Robson, Claire Grima and U20 Dillan Quinn. Together they finished sixth on the day, enough to keep the women in fourth in the League table going into the Christmas break.
A depleted Senior Mens team led in by Alex Milne in 12th could only finish in fourth on the day, effectively writing off any chance of retaining the League trophy this year.
After two matches the U13 Boys and the combined U15B and U17 Men are both in second. The U13 Girls are in third, the U15 Girls in second and the U17 Women in fourth.
