The 2016 Saucony English National Cross-Country Championships lived up to all expectations, with some superb individual and team performances on a testing, but fair spectator-friendly course, sandwiched between the Castle Donington motor racing circuit and East Midlands Airport.
The ankle-deep mud of Blackburn was thankfully a distant memory on almost Spring-like day, and the going underfoot on the twisting, undulating circuit, with a couple of testing climbs nonetheless, was largely firm. Where it did cut up, however, the mud was not the squelchy mush of the Northerns, but rather a sticky, clay-like mud that sapped the stamina and claimed several errant spikes that hadn’t been tied, or even taped, on strongly enough.
Arguably the performance of the day in a Royal Blue vest came from Nicola Woodward, who found the firmer conditions very much to her liking to sneak into the top 200 with an excellent 199th place out of 739 finishers. Collen Compson was second-counter in 329th, narrowly holding off a surging Emma North, who was one place, and just two seconds behind. Kim Fox closed out the scoring four for the Harriets, in 628th position and Lucie Forster finished 663rd.
With some of the Junior Harriers opting to bypass the National in order to concentrate on next weekend’s English Schools XC Championships, it was left to Duran Gün to fly the Royal Blue flag and Duran, one of the many who lost a spike somewhere out on the course (alas never to be found), fought well to finish 225th in the Under-13 Boys race, before taking up duties as official club photographer to great effect.
Steve McMahon led home eight senior Sunderland men, with a more than respectable 284th place finish, ably backed up by scorers Michael Edwards in 423rd, Paul Merrison 511th, Paul Redman 1050th, Shaun Bagley 1086th and Dean Phillips, another who preferred the firmer going to the quagmires of earlier in the winter, 1302nd for a team total of 4656 points, which placed the team 70th.
Gary Fox wasn’t far behind Deano, in 1369 place, followed by Muzzy Gün in 1440th and Barry Marlee 1520th.
Morpeth Harriers won the team title by a huge margin of 277 points from Notts AC, their six counters all placing in the top 40 (and nine in 106!). Sunderland Harriers can take encouragement from Morpeth’s success, the blueprint being the careful nurturing and development of young local talent over a long period, allied with shrewd recruitment from all across the north-east. This is exactly the approach team manager Albert James is employing as he seeks to return the Royal Blues to their position of pre-eminence, initially in the north-east and eventually on a national stage. The raw materials are there, the plan is in place and the prospect of Wearside teams stepping up to receive medals in the post-race presentations might not be so many years away!