Great day at the Lancs!

It was another highly successful day for Manx Harriers at the Lancashire Cross Country Championships at Witton Park in Blackburn on Saturday. A total of 7 medals were won by individuals and teams. This may be 1 down on last year’s total – however 3 of the medals this year were gold, which is 1 up on last year.

My fellow cross country blogger Andy Fox has already reported fully on the performances of the Manx Harriers squad at http://mudlark200708.blogspot.com/, but I thought I would add a few comments from my perspective as a supporter to the team at the event.

There were some terrific performances throughout the whole team, but the highlights have to be the gold medal winners. Keith Gerrard and Sarah Astin were both absolutely magnificent yet again. The tactics of both were very simple – head down from the gun and demoralise the rest of the field very early in the race. Simple those tactics may be, but to carry them out requires a lot of talent and a lot of confidence. Keith and Sarah have both qualities in abundance.

Keith’s performance was virtually an action replay from 2006, only this time his margin of victory was even more emphatic. At the start of the ‘Saucer’ climb on lap 1 Keith was already well over 10 seconds clear, and by the time the field came round for the second time Keith was almost at the top of the hill before the second man had arrived at the bottom! From then on the gap just stretched with every stride, and like all top-class sportsmen tend to do, Keith made the difficult look ridiculously easy. The way he tackled the very testing climb on each of the 4 laps was a joy to watch – he almost floated up the hill with a light, easy stride, and wasn’t even close to being out of breath at any stage. It was marvellous to see him running so well in a rare appearance in a Manx Harriers vest, and on this evidence he can look forward to the ‘business end’ of the cross country season with real confidence.

Sarah has an astonishing record at the Lancashire championships. 3 appearances, 3 wins, and every one more convincing. 2 years ago she won the Under 13 class by 5 seconds in a sprint finish. Last year she retained the Under 13 title by a 30-second margin. This time, in her first year as an Under 15, she won by an incredible margin of 53 seconds. Indeed, Keith’s and Sarah’s victory margins on Saturday were the two biggest of the day across all categories! Sarah has clearly fully recovered from her injury setback that caused her to miss the entire track season last summer and is now running better than ever.

Gemma Astin also ran extremely well in the Under 17 Ladies race to take the bronze medal. The front end of the field in this race was of a very high quality indeed, with 4 athletes who rank highly in the UK fighting for 3 medals. Gemma beat the highly-rated Kristie Leybourne which is no mean performance, but wasn’t quite able to challenge the front two this time – having a heavy cold last week didn’t help. The race winner Hannah Bateson is a year older than Gemma and won this race by a big margin last year, whilst in my last blog entry I correctly identified the hugely-improved Annika Jarman as a major threat – she finished 2nd.

Silver medals were also won in the Veteran age group categories by Andy Fox and Gail Griffiths. At the risk of being accused of bias I thought that Gail’s 7th place overall in the Ladies race was one of the performances of the day and a reward for a really good block of very focussed training recently. I thought beforehand that she might have a chance of getting in or around the top 12 if things went really well but to get as high as 7th was a superb effort. And of course it wouldn't be the Lancs Cross Country Championships without Andy Fox getting onto the podium. He missed out on the team medal this time (I think it was the first time that he has not been among the 6 'counters' for the team) but again finished 2nd in the V45 category.

The Senior Men's team performed magnificently to bring home the trophy in great style. So convincing was the margin of victory that we would still have won even without Keith in the team! When time permits I will have a look back through previous years' results to see exactly when was the last time that we had our 6 counters in the first 25.

The other medallists were the Under 17 Ladies Team who won silver, and I'm fairly confident in saying that this is the first time we have won a medal in this category at the Lancs - unless Andy knows better! Rachael Franklin and Bronwen Kaneen both acquitted themselves very well on the day in support of Gemma. Rachael was on a real mission up the Saucer on the first lap, passing about 5 of her rivals (2 of whom ended up in a heap on the floor halfway up the hill). Rachael's hill running this winter has clearly paid off.

It was a real shame that Polly Rogerson had to withdraw from the trip at the last minute with injury, as we would definitely have won at least a bronze medal in the Under 15 Girls with a 4th team member. I thought Hannah Scarlett and Catriona Cox ran magnificently on the day for 11th and 13rd places respectively. Hannah made a most impressive debut at this level of competition and looks to have real talent as a distance runner, while regular Lancs competitor Catriona showed her usual steely determination to record possibly her best performance to date in the competition.

I will post some further thoughts from the day later in the week, but will close this entry by saying a big thank-you to Andy Fox for his usual great organisation of the trip. Let's hope he gets plenty of support for the trip to the English National Cross Country Championships at Alton Towers on 23rd February. For further details regarding this trip, click on http://pub38.bravenet.com/forum/3219660836/show/656794