Every Saturday for the HHH senior road and cross country teams seems to be a super Saturday now. After our men had won the shinier set of medals the previous weekend at the London Cross Championship, this week our women reclaimed centre stage at the second Surrey League in Beckenham Place Park.
The A team also reclaimed winning ways over Belgrave with an impressively strong showing at the front of the field. Lucy Jones got ready for the following Saturday’s European Cross GB trial in Liverpool by taking her 4th win in the last 5 league races after having been away in Font in October.
Leading a superb HHH 1-2-4, Lucy finished 26 sec ahead of Molly Smith’s awesome team debut after joining our group and club in July and “fresh” from her 2:34 marathon in Frankfurt 3 weeks earlier in turn placed a clear 2nd. Sophie Tooley impressed with a great return to form in 4th place, Laura Gent again showed what a valuable addition she is to our ranks in 14th and Liv Stillman came back from Wales for a busy weekend of racing to close our winning A team in 16th in a strong field.
Our B team repeated our 2nd place from the first match in their category, led by another very welcome debutante Margaret Coogan in 20th, over here from Boston now working for Tracksmith, giving us 6 top 20 finishers. Charlotte Davies was 24th, Lily Newton 31st, Jenny Nandi (welcome back) 37th and W40 Karen Ellison 69th.
Only 4 seconds outside our B team in 73rd, Bethan Philp also made a strong team debut with 19 HHH women finishing the race. All to play for in the last 2 league races in the new year as we made good inroads into the lead that Belles had after the first race.
Our men maintained 4th place of 10 in Div 1 At the halfway stage of the league season with a hard fought 5th place on the day. Morgan Roberts had one of his best runs so far in 16th, followed in closely by great runs from Liam Burthem 19th, Tom Austin 25th and Matt Wood in his first XC for the club 29th. The A team was completed by Harry Roberts 50th, Tom O’Mahoney 52nd, Sam Brashaw 54th, Ashley Goncalves 63rd, Ioan Jenkins 72nd, and Andrew Warburton 74th.
M40s Jeff Cunningham and Jack Brotchie led the B team in 87th and 98th and Simon Coombes’s dash into the top 100 (100th!) saw him finish as 1st M50. George Jackson was 101st, Alex Gutteridge 102nd, Ewan Bate 106th, Joe Holland 111th, James Nutt 112th, Seve Loudon 136th, and Fintan Kearney 141st. Second claim U20 Rory Orsborn was just behind Fintan in 142nd.
Great packing all round it and was pleasing to see a total of 37 HHH men in the senior race.
Geoff Jerwood