A&T x-country – Burnley 19 December 2009

We had a little snow on Friday night so I got a text message from Simon Ford on Saturday morning asking if the race would still be on. I told him that it is VERY unusual for x-country to be cancelled. However, I got a phone call a couple of hours later when I was about 5 minutes away from Townley Park; - it was Simon. “It’s snowing really hard in Leigh are you sure the race will be on?” We decided unless he got a note from his Mum there was no getting out of it!

Despite the conditions (see above) we had a good turnout, 14 runners (including Simon!)

Our 3 ladies arrived about 10 minutes before the start & set off to tackle the snow covered course with little or no warm-up. Mary-Anne, with only her third outing on the country, was the first A&T finisher with another great run. Brenda Wane & Carole Baines both had good runs with Brenda making it 6 wins out of 6 starts in the 35 & over category

Next it was the turn of the men with 3 large laps; first A&T finisher (as usual) was Simon with another impressive run (despite spending most of the morning trying to get out of it!) Yours truly, Mark Riches, spent the first lap & a bit trying to catch Peter Mulleady & managed to pull away slightly (less than a minute at the finish). The fast finishing Shaun Moran also managed to catch Peter & he was catching me too but ran out of course! Mark Ruscoe was next, after going through a bad patch during the race, followed by good runs by Terry Gardiner, Mark Lysycia & Derek Coop (Mark beating Derek for the first time in X-country race) Steve Foster, Craig Bradbury & Terry Hughes completed the line-up with solid runs

Next race Beacon Park, Skelmersdale Saturday 16th January 2010 – see you all there

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Link to XC Photos