Cassiobury Park in Watford was the venue for the first Chiltern League Cross Country for 2014 in good conditions. Despite losing some of our team to a half marathon on Sunday, there was a good showing across most age groups with encouraging performances and several juniors competing in this type of event for the first time.
In a race of over 200 athletes, Rob Taylor was happy to finish 34th in the Men’s/U20 event and 3rd V40 in his first Vet race; he was also first Vale man home in a time of 35:41; Tim Jones not far behind (V50) in 36:08 was 2nd in his age category. It was good to see Declan Hamblin running again after a long spell of injury; he completed the race in 37:26 finishing 57th overall. Tim Kelly was 4th V60 to cross the line.
Chloe Oldfield had a great Chiltern League debut finishing 11th in the ladies’ race in a time of 26:32 with Julia Austin 40th and 3rd V50 home. Rosanna Iannone also had a positive start to the season finishing as 3rd Vale lady home in 30:21.
In the U20 event, Christian von Eitzen finished 6th in 34:02 with training partner Kieran Lindars breathing down his neck finishing in 34:03; Ben Riley ran a super race to finish in 42:16; his first competitive race for the Club. Two U17 boys had to pull out during the race through injury, but Harri Kane and Daniel Lindars finished well. Along with Eliza Taswell-Fryer in the girls’ race, these three regulars showed true grit in their performances as first years in the age group. The U17 girls’ race had two in debut performances for Vale and both ran brilliantly. Sarah Shepherd finished a strong 8th and Leoni Glasson 37th, their coach described them has having run their socks off.
Solid runs across the U15 age group with Conor Richardson and Katie Jones first to finish for Vale in each. U13 Max Perry continued his fantastic string of races to win the boys ‘ event with Josh Brown second Vale boy and Ben Lindars third. Matthew Rizzo-Nandi ran his first race for the Club wearing football boots; watch out other U13s when he dons spikes! Three U13 girls completed the race with Lucy Perkins first home in 15th place followed by Hannah Mabey and Abby Soutar.
The U11 children were fantastic. William Ratcliffe finished 4th in his event in 7:05, with 6 Vale boys behind him in the race. A special mention for Jack Pearce who was stuck behind an accident in the traffic so ran a mile and a half to the Club tent, changed and ran to the start line just as the race began; true dedication, well done. In the girls event, Anna Cuthbert was fourth to cross the line in an amazing 7:51. She had run in a schools’ event in Haddenham at 9.30 in the morning and was then driven to Watford to take part in this race; brilliant Anna! Eleven of our U11 children competed for the Club in their first Chiltern League race; each one can be very proud of their performance.
Full results: Chiltern League Watford 2014 U11-Anr http://www.chilternccl.co.uk/c2014M1.pdf
Division 1 Results – Chiltern League Watford 2014 – U13 – Snrhttp://www.chilternccl.co.uk/c201411.pdf