Report on Wessex XC League held at Salisbury on Sunday November 14th 2004

Results are available here

The Harriers again had a good turn out across all the age groups from junior fun run to veterans, despite absences due to the major XC match at Bristol the previous day.. This fixture was held at Old Sarum, immediately to the north of Salisbury.

In the junior fun run for U11s the 1.8km course proved to be a real test of strength and endurance for the 70 or so juniors that competed. First home was Millfield School’s Tristan Bellack, chased all the way by his school mate and Harrier Callum Batten who finished in 2nd place. Tristan has now won both of the opening fixtures whilst Callum has a 3rd and a 2nd place to his credit. Ashleigh Chinnock also ran well again, joined this time by Hattie and Becca Ffookes, and by Alice Warman making her debut.

In the U13 girls race, Alice Woods stormed round the course to finish in 4th place overall in 8.05, strongly supported by Leighanna Chappel, finishing 8th (8.19) this time to back up her 10th place of the previous outing. Hayley Guest, 51st (10.18) and Robyn Sharp, 56th (14.00) also competed well in the big field. In the U13 boys’ race, despite a number of absences due to a school competition the previous day, the Harriers team of Charlie McLean, 4th in 9.19, Tom Thick, 21st in 10.13 , Joe Clark, 27th in 10.28 James Beckman, 37th in 11.30 and Alan Herbert, 40th in 11.42, all ran well.

In the U17 women’s race Kyra Hawkins ran a well judged race for 17th place in a time of 14.18; whilst in the same age group for the men Chris Ramsey finished 14th in 14.59 in his first competitive outing in the League this year, and Daniel White finished close behind in 18th in 16.00 dead. In the senior women’s category, a number of the Harriers had competed the day before at the Bristol ‘Mike Sully’ XC match, and so only the stalwarts turned out on the Sunday. First Harrier home in this category was Laura Whitehead, making her return to cross-country, to finish 12th overall in 17.40, followed home by Tracy Halliday, 24th in 18.41, Becky Lee, 27th in 19.19 (1st F50) and Angela Thomas in 57th in 22.10.

Although the full strength senior men’s team of the Harriers was not available on this occasion there were a number of solid performances in the largest ever field of 139 runners. Club Veteran Team Manager Dickie Wythe demonstrated his strength to finish in 28th place in 29.58, closing down on and then overtaking team-mate Nick Somerville, 29th in 30.04, in the final stages of the 9km race. Graham Collins, 39th ran well for 30.34, as did Dave Stanfield, 43rd in 30.55, just ahead of John Sharp (30.56) making his debut for the Harriers. Then came James Mellanby, 54th 31.40, Dave Barlow, 56th in 32.01 Pete Darton, 57th in 32.04 and evergreen Stuart Marsh, 63rd in 32.16 to close the Harrier finishers.