The first Birmingham Cross Country League fixture for our senior men was the Division One fixure held in Cheltenham and following on from the success at the National Cross Country Relays the team put on another strong performance to finish in second position.
Kadar Abdullahi had an excellent run as the first Stag home in second place, followed by Omar Ahmed in fifth, Jonathan Gorringe 9th, Will Richardson tenth, Tom Beasley in 14th and Ed Banks closing the scoring for the A team in 25th place. This gave the team a total of 65 points only one point off first place currently held by Loughborough Students.
The B team is lying in fourth position in the B team competition. With 422 points they are only seven points behind the the team in third. Scorers for the team were Orlando Corea (49th), Jonathan Bradford (53rd) Andy Peat (65th) Teklay Gebrekidan (69th) Ben Griffiths (92nd) and Yahyr Dirir (94th).
Birchfield had a strong turnout and in addition to those scoring for the teams also competing were Jonathan Read (123) Connall Green (140), Lee Hearns (161), Ben Prince (167), Matt Biggs (172), Sam Chatwin (195) and Silas Goshawk (228). There were 300 competitors in total in this race.
The first Midland Womes's Cross Country League race was held at Coundon Park in Coventry. A mixed bag of weather didn’t upset the team as it poured down for the warm up then it kindly stopped for the race but poured down again immediately afterwards. An excellent complement of 16 athletes turned up for the first race and the overall field saw a total of xxx competitors tackling the course.
The huge field made it difficult to spot Birchfield athletes on the early lap but soon Chloe Richardson as ever was in the leading group followed closely by new recruit Jessie Lutwyche then Carli Baldwin, Lizzie Watters and Karys Amory. As is often the case as the race unfolded there was not much movement in positions and so it was that
Chloe led the team home as she often does in 5th place. Jessie Lutwyche had a splendid race to finish 7th not far behind. Carli Baldwin in her 3rd cross country ever finished 21st and closing the scoring was Lizzie Watters in 29th.
Within seconds of her came Karys Amory in 31st. Sarah Conway was our first Master home in 39th with Junior athlete Bethan Hinett in 50th. Frances Vickers was returning to XC after a horrible biking accident and finished 60th.
Second Master Louisa Davidson was 77th and Sam Watters 90th. Robyn McDowall and Emma Lines finished 93rd and 94th sharing the same time. Sarah Travis closed the scoring for the Masters in 99th with Nicola Ross in 108th.
Junior Caitlin McMorrow was 130th and Sarah Pallett 145th.
The senior team did really well to to be the first club team after the University teams to take 3rd position and the Masters team were 4th.