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 picking up a niggle during the event, Pancho went on to finish 81st in Portugal.

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 was the first HW male finisher in 39th (9th M45) in 16:38. James Hamilton (34th M50) ran 19:47 and Peter Collins (25th M55) 21:26.

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.

Right: Anastasia and Cassie