The latest named storm of a dreadful Winter period, Storm Jorge was however thankfully unable to do what its two immediate predecessors had successfully managed and force the cancellation of the latest North East Harrier League fixture, so round three of the now five fixture cross country programme took place at Alnwick Pastures on a bright but breezy, chilly Saturday afternoon. Held once again within sight of Alnwick Castle, the course was essentially that used for the North East Championships in December, with the Senior Men completing three laps and the Senior Women two over a variety of challenging – but thankfully largely dry – terrain. With the fixture only a short drive up the A1, a strong Morpeth turn out saw the club winning no less than four of the eight team fixtures with one individual first place performance. This belonged to Under 17 boy Dylan Gooding, running out of Slow Pack in his first Harrier League outing of the season, who won by well over a minute from his nearest rival. The supporting runs of Dylan Davies and Euan Duffin, 5th and 18th, also meant the team finished in 1st place ahead of Houghton Harriers, who have been their keenest rivals throughout the season in both the Northern and National Championships. The U/17 victory was the third in a row for the club on a successful afternoon, especially for the teenage boys. Earlier, the U/13s had finished a comprehensive 1st, this time ahead of Gateshead Harriers, with Sam Livingstone their first counter in 3rd place, Oliver Tomlinson 7th and Luke Robson 8th They were followed by an even more dominant group of the club’s U/15s, with Dylan’s brother Ryan first home this time in 4th and supporting runs by Sam Tate in 6th and James Tilley 7th. However, with Liam Roche 12th, Bertie Marr 13th and Matthew Walton 17th, the club actually had six in the first twenty finishers, proving once again what a strong age group this is for the club. In the matching girls’ races, Abi Leiper showed she had got last week’s challenging National Championships out of her legs when finishing 5th in the U/15, one place behind training partner and Alnwick Harrier Mille Breese. Zara Naughton was 22nd and new recruit Caitlin Flanagan 25th, although she was sadly not yet eligible for the team count. Despite missing leading light Robyn Bennett - who had competed with distinction midweek in the Police Service UK Championships - the club’s U/17 girls and U/ 20 women also gave a good account of themselves, finishing in 3rd place behind Blaydon and Elswick Harriers. Sophie Coaker came home in 3rd place, with Ella Duffield 6th and Kate Gaffing completing the scoring count in 17th. Earlier, the day had got off to a bright start with a storming run by Under 11 boy Rob Walton, who was only pipped on the run-in by his Gateshead rival but credited with the same time. Harry Shaw also ran for the club, finishing in 54th. In the corresponding girls race, Emma Tomlinson ran well to come home in 18th. Penultimate event of the day was the two lap Senior Women’s race, and a first-rate turn-out of no less than thirteen athletes from the club helped ensure a comprehensive 1st team place. Led home once again by the tireless Jane Hodgson, 5th from fast pack and, at the age of 36, still posting the 2nd fastest time of the day behind Heaton’s Danielle Smythe, Morpeth’s scoring count was completed by sisters Lorna Macdonald and Lindsey Quinn, 8th and 29th respectively from medium pack, with Julie Vermaas in 37th from slow. Behind them, there were a host of decent runs: Gwenda Cavill was 43rd from slow; Jane Briggs, 69th from medium; Sue Smith 112th from slow; Sarah Lawson 115th from medium; Sarah Routledge 131st from slow; Michelle Thompson 137th from fast pack; Laura Shaw 164th from slow; Fran Naylor 213th and Margaret Macdonald 237th. The victory moved the club’s women to the top of the Grand Prix standings, tied on places with Tyne Bridge Harriers but well ahead of third place South Shields. Equally strong performances in the final two fixtures – the last of which is close to homeat Druridge Bay – should see the club regain the title they won in 2018 but lost last year. Final event of the day was the Senior Men’s race and, after the dismal turn-out at Aykley Heads in December, it was cheering to see no less than sixteen runners heeding the call and a much improved team performance. In a race won by over and a minute from medium pack by Wallsend’s young Sam Charlton, Adam Pratt had another good run to finish in 7th from medium pack. He was supported by the ever-improving Ricky Stafford, 42nd from slow, Alistair Macdonald, 69th also from slow, Gary Jones, 84th from fast, and Lee Bennett, 89th from medium. Final counter was evergreen Over 65 Dave Nicholson, 104th from slow. Mention should especially be made of Jones, who is having a fine season over the country and has now moved up to 2nd in the Veterans Grand Prix. Morpeth’s other finishers were: Eric Adams, 113th from slow; Andy Hebden, 134th from fast;
Jamie Johnson, 142nd from medium; Richard Kirby, 154th from slow; Jason Dawson, 161st from medium; Will Clark, 218th from medium; Paul Brown, 220th from slow; Steve Johnstone, 229th from slow; Bill Tilley, 231st from slow; and Andrew Dippie, 255th from slow. The Senior Men finished in 5th on the day and moved up one place in the team divisions also to 5th. With Sunderland Harriers having clear daylight ahead of the chasing group, it looks like the title is now gone but strong performances in the last two fixtures might still secure a 3rd place finish. Morpeths Ross Floyd competed in London at the Vitality half marathon on Sunday 1st March 2020.
The race itself saw Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele break Mo Farah's course record with a time of one hour and 22 seconds. Floyd clocked a personal best time for the distance in 1 hour 9 minutes 18 seconds for 49th place. A number of athletes travelled to Manchester on Sunday 1st March 2020 to take part in the popular Trafford 10k.
On a windy day with wet roads also to deal with, the race proved quite hard work for many with conditions mitigating against the fast times the race has a reputation for. Won by the appropriately named James Hunt of Cardiff AC in a time of 29 minutes 44 seconds (the only sub 30 clocking) with Jess Judd (32:16)coming home just ahead of Eilish Mccolgan (32:25) in the women’s race, Sam Hancox was first in for Morpeth in 49th place with a time of 32:42. He was followed by Phil Winkler, 57th in 33:10; Lewis Timmins, 82nd in 33:50; Jordan Scott, 107th in 34:39 and Rob Hancox, finding it hard work on the day, 215th in 39:03. Nick McCormick was also 17th in 31:08. Some 849 finished. Although no medals were won, a very good 4th place team finish by the club’s Under 15 boys and Carl Avery’s tremendous individual placing of 5th were the stand-out results from Saturday’s attritional English Cross Country Championships in the Midlands. Held once again in the picturesque grounds of Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, a venue last used in 2017, conditions were among the worst in living memory with the recent adverse weather having reduced several sections of the course to a sea of mud and creating real headaches for the organisers, not least with car parking for the thousands of competitors and spectators. It is to the credit of all concerned that the event went as smoothly as it did, although entry to and from the car park was a real problem. The day’s proceedings for Morpeth got off to a promising start in the second of the day’s ten races which saw the club’s Under 15 boys in action. Headed once again by Joe Dixon, who finished in 20th place, there were supporting runs by Ryan Davies, not too far behind in 36th, Liam Roche, 92nd, and Will De Vere Owen, 115th. The team finished in a highly creditable 4th place behind three teams all from the South: winners South London Harriers, Tonbridge AC and Windsor, Slough and Eton. Ryan Davies was also the first – but sadly not the last – to go face down in the mud for the day. Abi Leiper was the club’s sole competitor in the matching U/15 girls, coming in home in a strong 44th position out of some 390 finishers, and still able to muster a smile at the end. Robyn Bennett was in a similar position in the later Junior Women’s race, coming home just outside the top 50 in 52nd place. Ryan’s older brother Dylan ran in the U/17 race, and suffered the same fate as his younger brother - as indeed did first finisher for the club, Rowan Bennett. Currently on a run of fine form, Bennett had one of the club’s stand-out runs of the day to come in 16th, just over 30 seconds out of medal contention. With Dylan Davies 82nd and Dylan Gooding 125th, the team were unfortunate in not having a 4th scoring counter to back up their hard work. It was a similar story in the Junior Men’s, but here the absence of a 4th counter cost the team even more severely. Won by the impressive Zakariya Mohammed of Southampton AC, Ross Charlton battled his way through water and mud that was by now almost waist high in certain stretches of the course to come home in 30th place. He was followed up by Kieran Hedley, 46th, and Dan Melling, 62nd. With the bronze medal won by a team count of 242 points, the total of 138 points these three accrued meant an almost certain medal of some description was missed out on. In the Senior Women’s race that preceded the Senior Men’s, Northern Champion Jess Judd lost out to Anna Moller by a 20 second margin. Leeds City once again retained the team trophy. Final race of the day, the Senior Men’s, saw the biggest field of nearly 2000 runners - and the worst conditions - on a course which had by now cut up so badly that it was in places somewhere between a bad Glastonbury Festival and a World War One trench. With an early group of Gateshead’s Calum Johnson, East Cheshire’s Joe Steward, Leeds’s Linton Taylor and Morpeth’s Carl Avery establishing itself at the front, it was clear that the winner would come once again from the North of England, with the conditions, similar to the Northern, very much to the liking of Johnson. Half way through the race Johnson and Steward had got away from the chasers, with Avery battling to get up into a medal position some seconds back. It was Johnson who made the decisive break on the last lap, winning in a time 43 minutes 36 seconds, the first Gateshead Harrier to win the race since Brendan Foster in 1977. Steward was 2nd some 23 seconds back, with Taylor in 3rd. Behind them, Avery had dropped back one place to 5th ( 44:33),
just behind Southend triathlete Adam Hickey, Avery’s third top ten National Cross Country finish in as many years. Next home for Morpeth was Phil Winkler, 157th in 49:10 with Liam Roarty impressing his coach, a watching Jim Alder, in 215th (50:17). Battling through the mud for fourth and fifth counters were Ali Douglass, 251st in 50:57 and Andy Lawrence, 318th in 52:02. Unfortunately, young Alex Brown, who had been inside the top 200 for the first couple of laps, was very disappointed to have to withdraw, admitting that he wouldn’t have put himself on the start line, following illness, for any other race. That meant it was down to Over 45 veteran Jason Dawson to complete the scoring count, and in his first ever National, this he was thankfully able to do, finishing in 945th place. The loss of Brown inevitably had an adverse effect on the team’s overall placing, with the club back in 26th place, although still first North East team. Tonbridge AC won back the team title they had lost to Leeds City last year, with Bristol and West 3rd. Morpeth fielded athletes in only six of the ten races in total. Of these, there were only two complete teams, with two incomplete teams being short of only one runner to make a scoring count. There were no runners in the U/13 girls or boys, the U/17 girls, or the Senior Women. In total, some 19 runners took part: 17 male, 2 female. It remains a paradox and a source of great frustration that, while the club continues to perform very creditably at a regional level, when it comes to many high profile Northern and National events, levels of participation are significantly down and below what might be expected of a club like ours. If the club is to achieve the successes on some of these bigger stages which, on paper, it might well be capable of, much greater levels of commitment from club members, Junior and Senior, Male and Female, within are required. While some Morpeth Harriers were engaging themselves with the slimy mud, grit and earth,
of major Cross-Country events, others sought the warmer sanctuary of high-profile Indoor events, taking place in Sheffield and Glasgow. On Sunday 23rd February in Sheffield, Amy Lott ran the fastest opening heat qualifying time of 8.80s in the Under 17 Women’s 60m Hurdles, which shaved a fraction off her personal best of 8.81s, which she had recorded when winning the Scottish title recently. This took her into a later run Semi Final, in which she placed third in a blanket finish, recording a time of 8.86s. In the hotly contested final, she recorded an identical time, which unfortunately was only good for fifth place, with a great deal of hungry opposition just getting in ahead of her. Amy’s younger sister Hannah competed in the Under 15 Girls 60m Hurdles, unfortunately going out in the heats after hitting the first hurdle in her effort. She finished seventh in her heat, posting a time of 10.25s. |
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