West Yorks League cross country, the Abbey Dash and pics from Clay Bank West fell race.
West Yorkshire League Cross Country, Saturday 20th November
Another great team effort by the mens cross country team in the 3rd West Yorkshire League race at Bramley on Saturday. Top marks though to the under 15 girls who won their team race while the under 13 boys were close runners up. The under 11 boys and senior women both narrowly failed to finish a team, needing 1 more runner reasonably well up to get into the top 3 teams.
Helen Garnham was top lady in 10th place followed by Emma Willits 27th and Karen Wood 34th (2nd W40).
The senior men though were under strength with top scorers to date Mark Metcalfe and Ryan Buck both missing as well as several other potential team scorers. Prior to this race, the team was lying 3rd overall, just a point ahead of Wakefield. The aim for the race was damage limitation therefore, trying not to lose too many points on Wakefield so that we could hopefully overtake them in the last race. It didn’t quite turn out like that.
The weather was cool and still and the course was undulating and soft in places but with no heavy mud. Kieran Smith was soon well up and not too far behind was a large pack of COY runners. Our cause was hampered when Paul Goble had to drop out due to a hip injury, but everyone else was running well, especially James Palmer. In the first 2 races James set off fast and I (Andy Normandale) passed him in the second half of the race, but this time he paced himself much better, set off steady and then passed me and continued passing runners through to the finish, being 2nd club finisher. We had nobody in the top 30 finishers, but then packed fantastically, all 6 counters finishig between 34th and 59th. The finishers were Kieran Smith, James Palmer, Andy Normandale, Don Mc Millan, Chris Judge and Mike Schofield, with Martin Kirby and Ian Wilcock non scorers.
My guess was that that would be good for perhaps 5th or 6th place, so it was a very pleasant surprise when I logged onto the website in the evening to discover that we were 3rd team. As in the other 2 races Leeds City and Bingley were 1st and 2nd and barring disaster in the last race will finish in those positions for the series. We have now extended our lead over Wakefield in the battle for 3rd place to 2 points. If we can get a stronger team out for the last race at Wakefield in 2 weeks we should therefore be able to hang on to that 3rd place.
Abbey Dash, Leeds, Sunday 21st November
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