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Medalling Masters

Sunday 23rd January 2011

The Sussex Masters XC Champs postponed from December, finally took place at Lancing on 22 January. Phoenix walked away from the proceedings with two team medals. Defending champions, the over 60s had to be content with silver this year. Andrew Haig, Terry Avey and Malcolm Kemp scored 6th, 7th and 8th respectively. How's that for packing! Respect though to Brighton and Hove (1st, 2nd, 5th) who took gold. Our fourth runner Rik Taub finished well up the field in 19th place.

The over 40s have been just outside the medals in recent years and seemed resigned to a similar position this time but there were big smiles when they realised that the bronze medal was theirs. The icing on the cake was beating Brighton and Hove into fourth place by just two points. The fast-improving Bruce Warren was our lead runner (12th) followed by scorers David Powell (15th), Nigel Herron (16th) and Bruce Faulkner (20th). Again, good packing. Malcolm Hughes (23rd), John Marinko (24th) and Ro Harrington (34th) offered strong support.

Two impressive runs in the over 50 category. Phil "I can't run cross country" Hampshire ran a stormer for 6th place with Brian Friend fresh off the plane from his Arizona marathon and still jet-lagged managing an excellent 15th. The absence of a third runner meant that they couldn't score as a team.

Sadly no Phoenix women vets were available to run.

Full results

Photos by Hitoshi Kobayashi