We still managed to win 4 team events on the day – U13 Boys, U15 Girls, Senior Ladies and Senior Men.

First off were the mixed Senior and U17 Ladies and U17 Men as the rain started to fall.  All the courses at Bideford are fairly short and they were soon back into the park, not quite as muddy as the rugby players next door, but pretty dirty, with the top boys just coming home in front of the leading ladies.

Ryan Cleave came out on top in a tight finish, with James Waldie just missing out on 2nd close behind him and, with the Plymouth team not appearing a golden chance was missed to take the lead overall.

Not far behind was Jo Friday with 2nd in the Senior Ladies, to maintain her League lead and Bethany Alston in 6th, extending her advantage in the U17 competition with 1st in that section.  Emma Stallard backed them up well in 11th (2nd Vet.35) to confirm a team win by one point from Exeter and Sarah Jarvis (13th) and Heidi Cottam (15th) made up two thirds of what could have been an excellent B team with another runner.

We didn’t have any U13 Girls on the day, but the U13 Boys did their best to make up for that with a storming team win and a superb 3rd place for the B team.  The usual 3 way battle for supremacy between our top 3 ended with a narrow victory this time for Callum Jones and Tom Rawet and Sam Heslop-George made it  1-2-3 for our classy trio and a commanding overall lead in the team event.  Callum also heads his age group, with Tom a close 2nd and Sam will be top 3 as well if he runs the last 2 races at Bovey Tracey and Bicton, having missed the first at Redruth.  That was expected, but yellow and green vests continued to come in.  Connor Kitts had a strong run in 8th, Rob Glading made his 2nd appearance of the season with a gutsy 15th and Aidan Chapman, in his first race for the club, did a fine job in 18th and got a Brooks kit bag spot prize as a reward.  His finish ensured our B team was 3rd in the team placings.

Our U15 Girls have been formidable all winter and they did the business again to comfortably win their team race, though we’d almost given up on them until Olivia suddenly appeared on the start line!  Freya’s long-legged comfortable style is becoming more and more reminiscent of her sister Helen (who’s running again after a few years terrorizing Cardiff !) and she loped home with a deceptive finishing kick to take 2nd.  Olivia Ballard was only 12 seconds behind in 5th and Ellie Parkin made a VERY welcome first league appearance of the season to bring home the team in 8th for a 4th team victory in a row for these girls.

The victorious Under 15 Girls team

Though missing Sam Harry, our U15 Boys were bolstered by 2 new recruits and managed to come 3rd with their first team finish of the season.  Sam Williams had a solid run in 7th and then Ken Williams, having run his first ever race the day before off no training, had a great run to place 14th.  Tyler King had a bad slip and pulled a hamstring halfway round, but, aware that he needed to finish for the team, gusted it out to come home 16th.

The Senior men’s team was lower in numbers than usual, but not in quality and with Matt Cleave and Chris Dobson running their 2nd race in 2 days we managed to win and extend our lead slightly overall.  Dave Buzza couldn’t let Matt Cleave beat him again, not after he’d let Jacob Landers (an U17) beat him at Truro, so pulled his finger out in the last mile to come home in 4th, with Matt close behind in 6th and Chris having a much better run in 7th.  Nathan Gosling showed that he’s going to give Tony Dunn a tough battle in the Navy races coming up with 9th, despite thinking he only had 1 climb of the big hill (we had 2, but from different directions) – a nasty surprise if ever there was one! Adrian Ball blamed Christmas excess for a slightly below par showing in 27th, but still enough to clinch the team prize.  Unfortunately for those of us who like to live vicariously, this only entailed over-eating, not the wine, women and song I hoped to hear about!  Come on Bally-boy – fast women are more attractive than fast cars!  John Waldie had his best race of the season so far to finish in 49th position.

Well done all – can those intending to go to the world’s most famous X-C course for the South of England Champs. on Saturday 26th January make sure that Pete Meredith or Dave Buzza know you want to go!