28/11/09 - Benedict Whitby qualifies for GB team for Euro Cross Championship
The trial race for the Great Britain team for the European Cross Country Championships in Dublin on 13th December took place in Liverpool as part of the McCain UK Cross Challenge. Second claim HHH runner Benedict Whitby toed the line with high hopes of qualifying for the senior men's team and in placing a superb 3rd he secured his place on the team, ahead of local rival Phil Wicks and one or two other regulars on these teams. We wish Ben and the rest of the GB team the very best for a strong team showing come the big day.
Closer to home, the South of Thames 5 miles cross country team champs took place at West Wickham and saw our men's team place 5th and our women's team claim bronze medals. Our men's performance mirrored a recurring theme throughout November, that of strength in numbers but with less men in the top 20 or 30 than the expectations our high standards of the past few years would engender. By contrast, our women's medals were our first in this race since we won the team title in 2002.
Ceri Diss in 4th place, Helen Sharp 12th, Sam Whiting 19th and Sarah Allen 26th were our 4 scoring team members who came 3rd, while our most prominent men were Chris Busaileh 5th (albeit non scoring thanks to an oversight on the part of his team manager), Jonny Henderson 10th, Mike Cummings 26th, Simon Phillips 35th and newcomer Carl Ferri, whose 44th position in his first cross country race for a couple of decades was a very promising HHH debut. We failed to successfully defend the shield for the best 8 man team as a strong team from Kent AC reclaimed a title that has almost become their own property apart from our interruption of their dominance in 2008, with our other scorers in this team being Sarwar Khan 47th, Basil Wallace 48th, Paul Shiel 71st and Simon Beston 104th, while Rajdave Singh placed 56th as a non scorer. (Geoff Jerwood)
Click here to view the full results (hyperlink to The Power of 10 website).
14/11/09 - Depleted HHH men's team relinquish Surrey League lead
With 5 of our 10 scoring team members from a month earlier missing for the second Surrey League race at Coulsdon, our collective strength in depth was tested to the full and unfortunately on this occasion we were not quite able to rise to the challenge. Despite our numerical advantage - we supplied 29 of the 157 finishers - we did not have enough cutting edge at the sharp end to overcome a stronger Thames Hare & Hounds team on the day. Having won the first race by 37 points, we were trounced by 58 points in this race and find ourselves 21 points in arrears at the halfway stage of the league season. Whilst we could console ourselves that the deficit could have been even larger under the circumstances, we also know that the third race on 12th December at Richmond now takes on a huge level of importance, as another defeat, and certainly one of this magnitude, would put and end to our reign as the league champions.
A catalogue of injury, illness, work and other commitments deprived us of at least half dozen who would normally be team scorers, but there were some encouraging performances from those who were able to run. Gareth Price made a very welcome and timely Surrey League debut for HHH, leading us home in a very fine 4th place in a strong field. Not bad for a man who confesses a dislike for cross country conditions! Following Gareth and winning an important battle for 5th place was Alan Barnes, showing improved form since his 19th position in the first league race, while Jeff Cunningham in placing 9th now has a Surrey League top 10 result to his name. Tim Elsey, also now improving with every race (19th), track man Jonny Henderson (21st) and veteran David Robinson (22nd) all did our team score no harm, but team wins at this level depend on closing 10 runners in this area of the field and higher and our final 4 scorers were unable to achieve top 30 positions.
That said, the 4 men in question all put in excellent efforts, none moreso than our next man, 38th placed John Kettle, who is new to this level of cross country racing and looks an exciting addition to our squad in his first Surrey League race. John was very closely followed by Deron Fagan 39th and Rob Karn 40th, both showing positive moves forward in their comebacks, while our scoring team was closed in by the ever reliable Alan Wray in 46th. Another 6 HHH men finished in the top 100 and a good many more were further down the field enjoying the Herne Hill experience on a day when severe weather warnings had suggested people stay indoors and trees had been blown down onto roads and across railway lines in the area.
One particularly interesting competitor was Sammy Mensah, who placed 124th. Nothing remarkable in this, not until you consider that Sammy has this summer run 10.7 for 100m and 21.6 for 200m and is a Surrey and South of England medallist at these distances, so 5 miles plus of undulations and slippery underfoot conditions were a far cry from a very rapid sprint down a well surfaced track. Good to see one of our very best British League team members working on his endurance and by all accounts enjoying the run. (Geoff Jerwood)
07/11/09 - HHH men humbled at Reigate, but medals for our women too
Herne Hill Harriers' men's cross country team aim high and often hit the target, but this year's Reigate Priory relays saw a rare defeat for us in this particular event, one that we had seemingly made our own property over most of the past decade. With a team at least as strong as some of our other winning teams, we had hoped to successfully defend our shield from 2008, but despite building a lead that looked unassailable after 4 of the 6 legs we were overhauled in the closing stages by an impressive Tonbridge sextet who saved their best runners until last, thereby outwitting the HHH team manager on the day. Collecting second placed medals was perhaps not what we had in mind, but we were joined at the presentation by our women's team who collected bronze for finishing 3rd in their category, aided by Karen Ellison and Suzie Richards both running quick times, which stood up as the 3rd and 4th best overall in the women's race.
We set out our stall early on, with Alan Barnes finishing a close up 2nd on the first leg handing over to Chris Busaileh, who took us into a lead of around 30 seconds over what was to be an incomplete Dorking team, but some 1 minute 15 seconds ahead of eventual winners Tonbridge. The latter made some inroads on stage 3 to move up to 2nd and within a minute of Tim Elsey as he handed over to our 4th stage runner and fastest man Kevin Quinn. Kev stretched out our lead to over 90 seconds after 4 stages with the 6th fastest men's time overall and it looked like game over. However, Tonbridge came back very strongly to close in with the 2 equal 3rd fastest runners of the day and the signs were not good as our lead was whittled down to a mere 10 seconds at the final handover as Simon Coombes found leg 5 a struggle after a fast start.
David Robinson has run many a fine anchor leg for HHH relay teams in past races, but these have usually been in veterans races and a slender lead over a Tonbridge man who has run sub 1:50 for 800m and 3:50 for 1500m and is almost 20 years David's junior was far too much for our man to defend on this occasion, try though he obviously did, and Tonbridge recorded a very creditable and comfortable win by 36 seconds after staging a fine comeback. With hindsight a different running order may have got more out of our men on the day, but it is always good to be challenged in these races and hopefully next time we can rise to it.
Our women's team got off to a great start as Karen Ellison came in a close up 3rd on the opening stage, beaten by the only 2 women who were quicker on the day. All 3 of the leading teams had their slowest A team runner on 2nd leg, but great credit must go to Suzanne Swaine, who had an excellent run to keep us in 3rd after 2 of the 3 stages and give Suzie Richards something to chase on the final leg. Suzie closed down almost a minute on a South London Harriers team who had led for most of the race, but in the end ran out of track to catch her rival and had to settle for a very good 3rd placing for our team.
Our depth was also again on display, as we closed 3 men's teams of 6, with a couple of our men taking the opportunity to run twice in different teams given the shorter than usual racing distance. Our women got up to double figures in individual numbers, as we had 3 complete teams of 3 and an incomplete D team of one runner. Karen and Suzie were the 3rd and 4th fastest women of the day, while Kev was 6th, Chris Busaileh 8th and Alan Barnes 9th in the overall men's standings, while Chris made the fastest 10 twice as he recorded a time only 6 seconds slower than his A team run when anchoring home our B team. Jonny Henderson was 14th overall in running for an Edinburgh Uni Old Boys team before then running a leg for HHH to help us to complete a C team. If only we could have had him replicate that run for our A team and then run for his other team later in the race! (Geoff Jerwood)
Click here to view the full results (hyperlink to Reigate Priory AC website).
