Following the earlier success of the club’s younger runners in the London Youth Games XC races, HHH senior men and women were also well represented at the London Cross Country Championship on the usual challenging Parliament Hill course that had by this time been well churned up by said young athletes races.
Our women ran well, led by Karen Ellison 12th, Julia Wedmore back racing after injury 28th, Bec Barrow 64th, Jess Winfield 95th and Mary Setyabule 96th. Next up were our men, who despite missing our first three finishers from the previous weeks Surrey League race were able to pack together superbly to win London team silver medals.
This was a real “engine room” effort as our first man Alan Barnes was 17th, but closely followed by Ross Macdonald making his first claim HHH debut in 19th, Jeff Cunningham in 20th and under 20 John Tayleur closing our team in 29th. John was home from Leeds University for the weekend and his strong finish to rally after losing a few places on the last lap secured silver rather than bronze for our team and John was also 3rd U20 in the race.
Our scoring team were well backed up by veterans Robin Jones 44th and Jonathan Ratcliffe 86th, with another younger runner, U23 Charles Philpot placing a decent 109th and the improving Patrick Conaghan in 129th. Despite indifferent league form our men are coming up trumps with some team medals in championship races which in the view of their team manager are of greater importance, albeit some better league performances would also be quite nice!
Geoff Jerwood