Glory for Heathside Women at XC Relays; Marathon PB extravaganza
The cross country season is barely a few weeks old but Heathside can already celebrate our first piece of silverware as the Women set the standard once again by winning the relays at Wormwood Scrubs. Pete Holland has captured the mood perfectly, so his report is included in full just below. The men were hampered by some honesty (who said it prospers?) and a subsequent DQ, while away from West London there were PB laden marathons aplenty from Essex to Oxfordshire, the Basque Country and rural Italy.
First though, over to Pete for news of our cross country success at the Scrubs:
SEAA Cross Country Relays, Wormwood Scrubs, Saturday 22nd October
"Another great day for Heathside as our women became South of England Cross-Country Relay Champions. Inspirational team selection by Captain Rebecca to put Kelly Thorneycroft on third leg. Ella was our fastest on leg one handing over to Sue Rust in second place. That's the second week Ella has proven to be club number one. We onlookers/supporters were thinking 'this looks good, we've got a chance of a medal'. How could we underestimate Sue, who stormed through and and handed over to Kelly in first? And is there anything more unnerving for an athlete than to be sent off on the last leg of a relay with a narrow lead? I feared for us and there were sideways glances as Kelly watched and waited for Sue to come up the last 300m, concern somewhat provoked by her nervously announcing 'I don't know which way to go'. An elite athlete from TVH started in third 17 seconds behind and it was she that most of us feared. However, we weren't taking account of Kelly's guts and attitude. With 500m to go the gap was down to 8 seconds and the TVH athlete was closing. Kelly was having none of it and gave it everything up the last 300m straight to win by 3 seconds. After 46 years of competing and spectating it was one of the best performances I've seen our club produce."
Our other ladies teams:
Heathside's B ladies team were also a bit special as Ula, Colette and Sarah comfortably made the top 10 of the 30-team field
Heathside C (Louisa, Esti and Katie) lost two places when vengeful (or possibly just confused) TVH marshals decided to send Katie round the longer men's course on the final leg. To Katie's credit, it still wasn't the slowest ladies' leg of the day and she'd have beaten a few of the men too.
Falling foul of officialdom was also the order of the day for the men's squad, as a last-minute pullout meant Captain Jake had to rejig the lineup, promoting Stu from the 'B' team to the 'A' team. Unfortunately, this was after the teams had been declared so Jake did the right thing and went and informed the SEAA race referee, who thanked him for his honesty and disqualified the team on the spot, despite Jake's excellent counter arguments of "I didn't check my phone because I was running" and "It's my first time as captain".
Men's roundup:
Heathside's A team disqualified for shuffling in a declared B team runner.
Heathside's C team lost a runner to fill the vacancy in the B team and therefore had no one to run the final leg, so that's a DNF.
Heathside's B team somehow haven't been DQed from the results, despite having shuffled in a declared C team runner. So congratulations to Chris, Gavin, Jonathan L and John F who nicked Stu's race number, for springing an upset and defeating the A team (on a technicality).
Sunday League, Cheshunt, 23rd October
Promotor-in-chief of Sunday League, Laura Boothman did a stirling job of rallying the troops for the first meet of the season in Cheshunt, although she was lamenting injured Gavin Parish’s absence as he normally sorts out the reports and highlights! But doing herself a disservice, Laura noted the following:
"19 teams competed, in the second largest race in the league's history:
Overall Heathside team position - 7 out of 19 teams (awesome!)
LHS Ladies A (top 5) in 2nd place
LHS Ladies B (next 3) in 4th palce
LHS Ladies Masters in 3rd place
LHS Mens A (top 8) in 9th place
LHS Mens B (next 5) in 8th place
LHS Mens Masters in 6th.
Top LHS finishers:
Elizabeth Drake (12th lady); Sandra Buckton (20th lady); Jessica Vinluan Litchfield (23rd lady)
Richard Macaulay (10th man*); Dave Browne (32nd man); Lee Connor (52nd man).
We will look at a fastest finishers by age in due course.
Wherever you finished, you were *ALL WONDERFUL*, and more importantly I hope you enjoyed it." Laura
The next dose of Sunday League action is November 13th (the day after the second Met League, so it's a 'Dirty Double' chance) at the much more easily accessible Grovelands Park, Southgate. Let's hope for another big turnout!
Bilbao Night Marathon, Saturday 22nd October
Dan Johns kicked off the weekend’s marathons, setting off at a fairly unconventional hour in Northern Spain but finishing a fantastic 26th out of over 800 runners as he set a whopping new PB in a time of 3:01.07.
Abingdon Marathon, Sunday 23rd October
A solid turnout from some of the regular Sunday long run contingent here as they teamed up to launch a Heathside assault on the Abingdon marathon last weekend. Top headliner was Rob Shulman, who won the V50 prize (and came 25th overall) with an amazing run as he equalled his previous PB of 2:53.36, while Ed Adams wasn’t far behind him in another huge PB time of 2:55.30. Phil Hogg emailed in the results but modestly only described his PB as ‘tiny’ (3:04.30) and omitted to mention he was also 1st V40, while Patrick Waldron’s time of 3:27.50 qualified him for the Comrades marathon. Rumour has it that there was another Heathsider making an appearance but their Club isn’t listed, so going all VIP area for a moment, if your name’s not down, you’re not coming in the report.
Chelmsford Marathon, Sunday 23rd October
Amy Luyendijk was the lone Heathsider to venture out to Essex to complete what she called a ‘beautiful race through quite undulating countryside roads around Chelmsford’. There was good weather, good support and a new PB of 3:36.49 as she finished in a very impressive 137th.
Bellagio Skyrace, Italy, Sunday 23rd October
I admit I had to look this one up, but the website description - ‘This route allows runners to start from the beautiful village of Bellagio (Como Lake) and climb to the top of "Lario Triangle" mountain, Monte San Primo’ - makes it sound ruddy marvellous. Anyway, Heathsider Audi Andruskeviciute made it across to Italy and she finished 175th overall (out of 379) in 3 hours 49 mins. The results are a bit of a headache to look at , but it looks like she finished 6th lady, but I’m told that the really important thing was that she beat the men she travelled with!
ÖTILLÖ Swimrun 1000 Lakes, Berlin, Sunday 23rd October
Last but not least, a quick trip to the world of more-than-oneeventing, as Francois Barou raced the last Ötillö World Series of the year near Berlin. Over to Francois: "This was a SwimRun which ended up for us as a 9K swim and 37K run affair. Despite a costly and slightly unfair detour, along with my friend Chris, we finished 24th men and 32st overall out of 182 in a time of 5.59.59 (yes no rounding thank you), an hour after the pros. The 11C degree water was an interesting feature throughout. A great day out which slightly made up for having embarrassed myself at the first round of Dan's Fantasy Met League."
Parkruns
The usual distribution of Heathsiders far and wide last Saturday morning and a quartet of female first finishers - big well dones to Leigh James (Finsbury), Elspeth Storrar (Pegwell Bay), Ursula Wilson (Orange - the name of the run, not a personal comment) and Jennifer Wing (Ally Pally). Full results here: http://www.parkrun.com/results/consolidatedclub/?clubNum=2017&eventdate=2016-10-22