“Belper Harriers set out their stall in record-breaking first league race of the season”
The first of the summer season’s BDL races, hosted by Belper Harriers at the Denby venue on Tuesday evening, saw an excellent turnout of 33 Belper runners secure a well-deserved second place behind a strong showing from Heanor RC.
The men’s team claimed the runners-up spot on the night, while our ladies team fought hard to finish in a pleasing 3rd position – just 1 point clear of 4th placed Ripley RC! This was certainly a most pleasing overall performance, particulary as 20 of our members were working on the race (including several who were recovering from the London Marathon – two of whom could potentially have been counters). If we can keep this committment and momentum going throughout the season, we have perhaps our best opportunity to date to challenge for an overall league win by capitalising on our superb start in this first race.
On the individual front, ANDY PARKIN led the men’s team home in an excellent 15th position, followed by SAUL TAYLOR in 20th. Then, all within just one minute of our 2nd counter, a veritable flurry of gold & black vests crossed the finish line in quick succession – ALEX DUTHIE, ED JAMES, TIM HOLLING, GEOFF LOWRY and CHRIS HAWLEY – to complete the scoring seven. There were many other excellent performances outside of the top seven scorers; illustrating the continually growing strength in depth that we are able to draw upon from within the club.
One of the most surprising aspects of the race – given the poor turnouts common in past league series – was the fact that we had 10 running for the ladies team this time around (even without our two London Marathon girls – and others working on the race for us)!! There were just four of our ladies in the same race last year… and only three in most of the previous cross-country series races!)
Repeating her achievement of a year ago, STEPH ILSLEY in 81st place ran well to finish 5th in the ladies race overall, and first in the VL45 category. Providing strong support in 130th and 132nd places were GEMMA IRVINE and the returning JO CABORN making up the scoring team of three. THERESA HEMPSALL though was given the same time as Jo, as they crossed the finish line together. (No ‘Stewards Enquiry’ was requested on the night, so I can only assume that both were happy with the official result!). As always, everyone – counters or not – can effect the result in these races… if any of our ladies passed a Ripley runner at some stage of the race, it could have been you who secured our 3rd place ahead of Ripley (as we beat them by just 1 point)!
It was great to see that several new runners, who have joined the Harriers in recent months, made their team debuts for the club at Denby: Chris Hawley (35th); Jonathan Saunders (119th); Scott MacDonald (139th); Adam Kirk (183rd); Vicki Kirk (270th), and Linda Simmonds (286th). Many congratulations to all of them! (I’m sure they will all now look forward to measuring their progress throughout the league season).
After last year’s race saw a record number of runners in a league race, yet another new BDL attendance record was established in this second staging of the Denby race… 303 runners!! The league had to purchase 50 additional finisher discs (from 251 to 300) after last year’s record turnout… and it looks like a further batch will now have to be bought in time for the next event!
A total of 58 Belper Harriers members (plus two partners) ran in and/or worked on this event – a fantastic level of support for the club!
The attached final results spreadsheet is the same as the provisional version that I sent out on Wednesday, but with the addition of the usual colour-coding to identify the Belper positions.
The next BDL race will be at Teversal Grange on Tuesday May 17th. Prizes from the cross-country league competition will be presented in the pub following the race.
Regards,
Steve