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Medalling Masters

Monday 19th January 2015

If you haven't seen the results yet, there were deeds of daring do from all the teams at the Masters' XC Champs last Saturday. Good to see a complete women's team out too. The course at Lancing was sopping wet and positively lethal on the steeper descents.

O60 men came a close third (bronze) in an amazingly competitive race. Special mention should be made of Paul Whelpton who ran a blinder taking individual gold in 35:20 for the five mile course. Colin Simpson (running an astonishing four minutes plus faster than last year!) and Andrew Haig were the other scorers with Malcolm Kemp in sturdy support.

The O50 men's race proved to be a very tight one as well with just two points separating the top three team positions. Bruce Warren picked himself up after falling (twice) to lead the Phoenix team home in sixth with Nigel Herron close behind in eighth and the third scorer Lance Bellers in twelfth. We had to settle for bronze but an exciting race all the same. Phil Grabsky, Jon Wright and Malcolm Hughes ran well to complete our second scoring team.

The O40 men went into this race looking to sneak a bronze medal given the known strengths of Brighton and Lewes in this age category. However some dogged performances on the day pushed us into silver medal position only 2 points behind the leading Brighton team and 5pts ahead of Lewes in 3rd. New vet Dave Carter led the team home in 4th place followed by Donald Maclellan in 5th who fought well to overhaul a Lewes runner on the final descent. Matt Greenall had an outstanding performance to finish in 10th and Austen Hunter, who only decided to run at the last minute due to injury, was the 4th scorer in a very credible 17th. Tom Sanderson, Jim Whitelegg, Andrew Neighbour and Ro Harrington made up our second scoring quartet and finished 5th in the team standings. Well done all.

There was a complete O35 women's team led out by a resergent Deb Friis finishing in 36th place with Kathryn Harnett not far behind. The team was completed by Natalie Davis who ran strongly in, as we understand it, her first ever cross-country race. The team was fourth of the four scoring teams but well in the mix.

Check the details here