Saturday 29 January 2011

2011 South of England Cross Country Championship Results

Another fun day at Parliament Hill and my first race for 3 months (left: photos Ken Hoye). All in all it was pretty hard work but an enjoyable one in the Saucony South of England Championships.

Up front Neilson Hall defended his title from last year in a much quicker time if my memory serves me correctly. The course seemed to be the driest I can remember, not that I was any good in the little mud there was ! Runner up was my Wells City Harriers club mate Ben Tickner and third was Jon Pepper with Parliament Hill specialist Chris Smith a close 4th.

A couple of minutes back I finished 29th which constitutes a personal worst for the southern but not unexpected given the lack of consistent training recently. You can only run on former glories (and mileage) for so long ! The lack of miles really told in the mud and up the hills though encouragingly I was able to work up a good head of steam on the flat, dry sections so the engine is in pretty good order. Just need to get some strength back in the leg muscles.

Today was pretty cold and I can't imagine it was much fun for the marshalls who had a long day battling dog walkers and their stray hounds. As has become the norm here the finish system works brilliantly with chip timing
allowing results to be available on course a few minutes after the race is over. And this year I was far enough behind the leaders to hear the presentation starting to take place as I crossed the line !

No doubt much discussion will take place about the race starting with what seemed like several hundred people still trying to get through the chip inspection tent. The race started on time but there was a big bottle neck again to get to the start. It would be good to hear the SEAA perspective before passing judgement. On the one hand people knew what the start time was and on the other it did take a long time to get through the tent.

Whatever the rights and wrong of why it happened having a championship race get underway without many competitors on the start line has got to set alarm bells ringing and its something that needs to be fixed for 2012.


Results
Senior Men
1 48:23 Neilson Hall Bedford & County AC
2 48:40 Ben Tickner Wells City Harriers
3 49:00 Jon Pepper Enfield & Haringey AC
4 49:06 Chris Smith Thames Valley Harriers
5 49:06 Gary Thornton Kent AC
6 49:21 Glen Watts Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers
7 49:24 Dean Lacy Cambridge Harriers
8 49:27 Kevin Heywood Bideford AAC
9 49:34 Darren Deed Bedford & County AC
10 49:47 John Gilbert Kent AC

...
29 51.55 Adrian Marriott Wells City Harriers

Full results here

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Great running Adrian good to see you back

Nigel said...

Where did you get the first ten results from? Can't find any results anywhere!

Anonymous said...

you did well adrian and you soon lapped me! 1 was 853rd in 89mins! i need to put in lots of hard work now! im on a diet as from 2moro! i enjoyed the run apart from the hills! cheers. tony watts

Adrian Marriott said...

Glad you enjoyed it Tony and you were far from last as you feared :-)

Get some miles in and you will soon improve as you have a good engine hidden inside that frame !

Anonymous said...

Hi Adrian

Where did you get the photos of Saturday from?

Thanks

Toby Larone

Adrian Marriott said...

Toby, they were taken by a friend who emailed them to me.

There are some from John Harvey on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/7818017@N02/

Anonymous said...

cheers adrian,i hope you get back to top form soon. im doing the street 5k wed after track training 2moro! are you doing the yeovil half-marathon? tony watts