News from South London Harriers
January 26th, 2008: South of England Cross Country Champs, Parliament Hill - Report
Posted by Chris Phelan at 10:02 pmFor some of us the journey to the race was a little too exiting! Read Jake’s report below:
As my train from Horsham also called at Merstham and Coulsdon Pam, Zoë, and I had arranged that they would join my train and at East Croydon we would change and join the rest of the party. All good plans went haywire when my train broke down just before Redhill - the safety computer system had failed on the train and they were unable to rectify this - train managed to get into the station but I could only proceed my journey with the next “late” train.
By now we were about 50 minutes behind schedule!… The party from Croydon made their way as scheduled after we told them of our problem! Managed to phone Pippa who also had problems driving to north London. Ruth got our numbers and had with Anne had everything under control. So everything was running smoothly at Parliament Hill. The underground
luckily was not a problem and we arrived just 15 minutes before the start of the SL race. A quick warm up saw them to the start in time….
It was an excellent performance by all our Senior Ladies in the Southerns, where Michelle Jenkins was our first finisher in 35th place in 36.32! (6th Surrey lady) She was followed very closely by Pippa, Beckie and Ruth completing our A team which finished 8th and 1st Surrey team.
It was difficult to quickly assess performances but comparing the Southerns with the Surreys a fortnight earlier Emily Adams the Surrey winner was just +30 secs slower as she had some rivals this time; Justina Heslop +1:50 slower; Sarah Murphy +1:30; Pippa +2:15; Ruth +2:30; Estelle Damant +2:30; Elinor Caborn +1:00; Janet Ray +2:15; Michelle 4secs faster! Beckie +49secs; Pam +2:47 slower. So I guess one could say that any runner who had a performance better than 2:30 slower then in Lloyd Park had a very good performance indeed and all others probably up to 3mins slower just as good a performance as the Surreys.
Our chairman PE had a memorable day - for an unimaginable reason he had decided that one race on one day was not enough and did the BWTT in the morning first before driving up to Hampstead. Apart from Anne who was
there all day he must have been one of the earliest “seniors” arriving on site.
As we were very late I had no time to collect any numbers let alone the mens! In any case that was the last thing on my mind - ensuring everybody was on time at the start was my first priority and have my watch ready to time them - although it was interesting to note that the official times were also were recorded by hand at the finish and like the electronic ones they were also about 2 secs slower than my watch - well I can’t press my start button until I hear the gun! - some of us managed to get the printed SL results - but mens were sold out - well done David in finding the results - young peoples below.
So after walking back to base with Jo after she had finished her race, we just saw the start of the men belting up the hill. There were some unused numbers left on the bench …… so I decided that I’d better hand them back in before Pam and I were going to have our soup and watch the mens race.
Our chairmans memorable day continued to astonish us as when he approached us and we cheered him on but to no avail he stopped and said “have you got a number for me”! - It does appear that somehow one can get to the start of a high quality race like the Southerns without number or chip and complete the race without being pulled out……… Sadly I had
just handed the numbers in - I don’t think they would have given me a number back 30 mins into the race so that Peter could pin it on his vest…..
But then it was a special day for Peter - he is officially “old” now ….(well for me he is still a youngster and some I believe think he is only 45…)… and then one is allowed to forget some things like getting a number *before* you race…. (see photo)
To have one of our men running around without number and chip is careless but to have another one without chip - the photograph shows the number is reckless…. we could have finished ten places higher in the teams if these two guys were recorded….
All had a good time at the after Southerns dinner in the evening with some excellent speeches. Due to calling the men from the last to first finisher the staff got confused as to when to roll the cake into the room as our “happy birthday Peter” set them in panic mode - luckily we had not moved to the next finisher so it all looked as it was planned like that.
Happy 50th Peter……. just get the men organised now!!……….
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