Results_

A beautiful,sunny but windy day in Beckenham for the South of England Championships, on a dry extremely undulating grassland course saw two outstanding medal winning Phoenix performances from Katherine Haslip and Owen Wallek.

Photos here - Full race video links can be found below on the results listing

Injuries and illness prevented full teams from starting, but Phoenix were represented in the Under 13, Under 15 girls and Under 15 and Senior men by a total of 9 athletes across the board.

Despite only becoming eligible for the Under 13 age group a few weeks previously, Sussex County 2nd placer Katherine Haslip not only turned the tables on the winner of the Sussex race, but ran strongly in the leading group from the start of the one lap race and with others struggling as they emerged from the woods, Katherine stormed to an extremely creditable 3rd place. Her final, powerful,uphill drive almost got her 2nd place, but the earlier leader from Jersey Spartan AC who was struggling in the last 100 metres, just held her place at the line ; both athletes finishing in the same time. With still 2 years in this age group there is plenty of future potential for the Andy Bone coached athlete.

Three Phoenix under 15 boys, all coached by Bruce Warren, lined up for the twice delayed start of their race, which in the cold wind could not have helped any of the competitors. When it finally got under way, Owen Wallek, baulked at the start, charged his way through to be in the leading group at the first turn. Raphael Read and Matthew Noakes in behind him. Owen was never out of the top 5 all race and heading down the final slope before the uphill finish was leading the field and was misdirected by a marshall. But he quickly recovered the place he had lost only to be overtaken by a super speedy uphill finish from the winner from Medway & Maidstone. Sportingly, Owen acknowledged that the wrong turn he had taken didn't affect the result and congratulated the red-vested winner after the race. Good sportsmanship all round as the 3rd placed athlete from Colchester admitted that it would have been an injustice if Owen had lost out to him after the marshalls mishap. Matthew Noakes ran a patient race starting in the middle of the 200+ pack and picked-off runners all the the way round the course to gain a place in the 60's which is definitely an achievement in this high class event. Esme Palmer-Malins was our only representative in the equivalent Girls race and stuck to her task well to take a creditable top 100 place in a race that's second only in importance to the National Championships in England.

The mens team were in for a very tough afternoon with 5, fast, hilly laps to contend with over a 9 mile course which probably felt quite bit longer than that, in a field of almost 700 runners. We didn't have quite enough starters to field a scoring team, but to get all four home well inside the top half of the field deserves a well done to all of them.

Results shown below