Herne Hill Harriers are the senior women’s National Cross Country Champions for 2026!! A massive day for the club with our U13 boys also bringing home team gold medals and our U17 men claiming bronze was crowned by a superbly executed individual win for Lucy Jones, our first ever HHH senior women’s medalist at these championships.
Only 8 seconds later Molly Smith became our second ever as she crossed the line in 3rd place after boldly taking on the race from the front to maximise her own chances of this sort of success. An incredibly proud day to see 2 of our group members on the podium and to see their rate of progress. Molly has readily embraced my training philosophy since we went 1-2-1 at the start of November and as with Lucy, our results speak for themselves.
This wasn’t just about 2 superstars right up at the front either as it was a day about which we’ve dreamed and believed it all possible but it’s really something else when it actually happens. Sophie Tooley ran her best senior XC race to date in a magnificent 18th place and Sarah Grover completed our national champion team (I love saying this) in a truly awesome 46th to guarantee us the gold medals and add to our club history being made. Such a good way to kick off the celebration of 2026 being the 50th year of female membership of our club.
All 4 of them needed to run out of their skins on the day to make the dream come true and they did. You literally cannot name a MVP among our senior women’s scoring quartet. This was a proper team effort even with our couple of individual podium finishes. Fittingly they all enjoyed a great post race party too, all together as a team for a top night in Newcastle!
Our champion Lucy loves a National XC in the northeast as she won the last time it was held up there in Sunderland back in 2013 as a U15 girl! A few fairly empty years in between then and our last couple of years when she joined our group and HHH in January 2024, started having fun with the sport again and the rest as they say is history. In the last year Luce has been London Marathon mass start female winner, England Athletics 1500m champion and now National XC champion. We look forward to our next chapters in which we will also have fun as we carry on moving onwards and upwards together
In the senior men’s race Arlo Ludewick, the holder of all of our club middle distance track records in this age group ran a cracking race to place 7th in amongst and ahead of a number of XC and road internationals. This was his best XC performance to date, with the last HHH man to finish top 10 in thr senior men’s race being Lewis Lloyd, also in 7th at Parliament Hill in 2018.
A shout out also to our second HHH team scorer, M40 Jeff Cunningham in 178th as this is his 19th consecutive year where he has featured in our National XC men’s scoring 6
We had 9 women and 9 men on their start lines, thank you to all for making the long trip and I’m sure all in our overnight group “on the Toon” had plenty of fun.
Completing our women’s team were Ella Newton 106th, Holly Mammatt 177th, Charlotte Kenyon 187th and Emily Roberts 232nd. Cali Brannan started, but Achilles pain sadly brought a premature end to her race, but hopefully seeing the rest of it unfold softened the blow a tiny bit.
Our men were 19th in the 6 to score and 17th in the 9 to score with our other 7 runners here being Matt Cartwright 207th, Ryan Hickey 304th, Stephen McLeod 335th, Fintan Kearney 368th, Chris Speed 421st, Jonathan Ratcliffe 499th and our very own Keith Newton cheered on by our other men and women as he finished in 708th. Awesome!
Geoff Jerwood – Group GJ training group
U13 Boys
Not to be outdone, our U13 Boys also won a fantastic team gold. Josh Lotter led the team home in a brilliant 10th, followed by Elliott Albert-Preskett in 25th, Ted Jones in 26th and Connor Harrow in 42nd. With two further boys in the 50s, Benjamin Thomas and Tommy Howard, this victory was a great advert for squad training and racing.
Our U17 Men finished an excellent third, led home by James Clements-Nash in 12th, Thomas Clerkin in 19th, Caspian Holmes in 20th and Zachary Morris in 67th.
To underline our broader depth and strength, our U17 Women were 5th team, U15 Boys 7th, U13 Girls 8th and U15 Girls 14th.