Congratulations to Eva, Lucy, Adam, Bart, Chris, Dave, and myself for surviving, and hopefully enjoying, the wettest and muddiest cross country course on record!!! The finishing places were as follows: Men (field of 425) – Jon Parkin 303rd, Chris Wright 320th, Dave Legg 354th, Adam Graham 395th and Peter Bartholemew 413th. Women (field of 179) – Eva Kenny 5th and Lucy Peel 112th.
There were some great performances by all the Ponteland Runners but performance of the day belonged to Eva who came home in 5th place in the ladies race. As a new club there is no better publicity to attract new members than our current crew finishing high up the field in a very competitive race.
The next race in the 6 race series is at Blaydon on the 17th November. This is a very flat and hopefully dry course, and could be the first time Ponteland Runners fields full teams in both the men’s and women’s races. At this event we plan to be better prepared! Hats off to Chris for bringing a flask of hot coffee – I think we will all be bringing something similar to the next event. We all felt a bit of ‘tent envy’ of the other clubs and some discussions were had about the bringing of some kind of tent next time to keep kit dry and to act as a meeting point for members. For my part I shall be bringing plasters for my heels – it would be fair to say that the new spikes rubbed at my heels a little bit over the 5.8 mile course.
Overall the event was great fun and a real test of running ‘toughness’. Let’s hope it was the first of many such days.
Happy running.