Street 5K (Race 2), Gwent League, Wessex League, Pentathlon European Champs and Mendip Schools XC

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Another big turnout at the Gwent League

It’s been a packed and successful few weeks for Wells City Harriers, with standout performances across road racing, cross country and international multi-sport competition. From another lively Street 5K with strong junior and senior results, to excellent showings at both the Gwent League and Wessex League cross-country fixtures, Harriers of all ages continued to impress. The club also celebrated international success in Antalya, where several athletes earned podium finishes at the Modern Pentathlon European Championships, while closer to home Harriers dominated the Mendip Inter-Area Schools XC with another series of superb junior runs.

Street 5K - November (Race 2)

Zoe and Rosie

Zoe Dale and Rosie Park “racing the night”

Race 2 of the 2025/26 Clive and Angela Thomas Street 5K Series was another great success, with more than 100 runners taking on the 5K and an excellent turnout of juniors for the 1K and 2K events.

In the 1K race, all eight juniors impressively completed the lap in under five minutes. Jonah Barrington was first home in 3:36, while Sophia Rowe was the first girl, finishing in 4:07.

The 2K race saw another strong performance from Heath Hughes-Davies, who clocked 7:13—still working towards his goal of breaking seven minutes. Elodie Burdett followed with a superb run, taking second place and first girl in 7:50.

Well done to all the juniors for their fantastic efforts!

Junior results can be found here.

In the 5K there was a surge of fast runners entering this month, with eight finishers clocking a faster time than last month’s winner. First home was Mark Threlfall who is currently on a mission to break sub 15 minutes (watch his YouTube channel: Global Triathlon Network). He set off a lightning pace, but soon realised it wasn’t going to be his night. He did well staying ahead of the ever closing chasing pack, finishing in 15:56. Louise Mills was fastest female, clocking 19:09.

Full results can be found here.

The third race in the series will take place on 10th December 2025. Don’t forget to bring your race number if you have already raced so far in this series.

Harrier Results:

1st Matt Lusby – 00:16:08

5th Alexander Coombs – 00:16:25

11th Oskar Beck – 00:16:41

14th Jamie Williams – 00:16:54

16th Addie Butcher – 00:16:59

27th Owen Astington – 00:18:16

29th James Hodges – 00:18:28

37th Joe Nelson – 00:19:07

40th Toby Hirst – 00:19:38

42nd Jack Barker – 00:20:02

45th Andrew Piper – 00:20:14

47th Evie Horsfall – 00:20:16

49th Zoë Dale – 00:20:39

65th Helen Allen – 00:21:34

69th Sean Honan – 00:21:53

70th Mike Bosley – 00:22:17

71st Thomas Kendrick – 00:22:18

75th Fergus Crawford – 00:22:35

81st Mark Pople – 00:23:39

87th Susan Williams – 00:24:28

90th Eva Dowden – 00:24:36

99th Kim Clark – 00:27:37

101st Jason Woodcock – 00:28:47

Fergus

Fergus Crawford

Gwent League (Fixture 2)

[Report by Jon James]

WCH Women Cardiff

Watch out - the Harriers are about!

The second fixture of the Gwent cross-country league was held last Saturday at Llandaff Fields in Cardiff – last year it was difficult to find any mud, but overnight rain meant that it was difficult to avoid it this year; nevertheless, the lack of hills means that this can be considered a quick course. The event combines forces with the British cross challenge which makes it a very competitive field in terms of the level of talent on display, e.g. Innes Fitzgerald and Megan Keith were both running in the women’s races, having competed in the World Athletic Championships in Tokyo this year. The event was live streamed on YouTube.

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Leila Chatard making her Gwent League debut.

First off representing the club was Zoe Frost and as at the first fixture she ran really well coming 16th out of 112 finishers. Leila Chatard made her Gwent League debut in the U15 girls race – she’s right at the youngest end of this 2 year age band, so did well finishing 83rd out of the 103 finishers and gained valuable experience. In the U17 race we had 3 runners: Florence Tibbatts was first home in 11th position out of 68 finishers, in what was a more competitive field than at the first fixture where she was 7th, followed closely by Daisy Abernethy in 14th and Sally Bott (making her debut and doing well) in 36th.

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The Under 15 Boys attacking the log jump.

One of the standout performances of the day came from the U15 boys: the first three home finished within a second of each other – Jamie Williams coming 4th out of the 86 finishers, Oskar Beck 6th and Joe Whelan 7th. Oskar did really well to finish having been spiked during the race. Toby Hirst made his debut in the U15 field – he’s in the first year of the two year age band, and performed well coming 56th. 4 runners are needed to score a team, so they finished a very creditable 4th. We just had one runner in the Y17 boys race, Addie Butcher; again, he’s in the first year of this age group, so delivered a good performance in finishing 19th in a field of 44 runners.

See a reel of our juniors racing here.

WCH Women prerace

Another great turnout from the senior women.

And so to the senior age groups. At last year’s fixture we only had Louise White running in the women’s race; she wasn’t available this year, but such is the enthusiasm now among the women for competing that we had 8 WCH runners toe the start line - also looking resplendent in WCH colours face paint! There were 417 finishers and first finisher for the club was Phoebe Aspinall, in 26th position, making the effort to travel back from University to run the race. This was a good run as she’s not yet back to full fitness having had an enforced layoff. Next in was Victoria Ryan, improving on her performance at the first fixture, coming 64th (and 6th in the W45 age group), closely followed by Emma Powell in 68th. Rosie Parks and Jo Tibbatts again had a good battle, with Rosie just winning out in 96th position and Jo coming 99th. Ellie Constable and Amy Reakes again finished very close to each other, but this fixture it was Amy who won out in 132nd position with Ellie in 135th place, then closely followed by Justine Dumotier Khripounoff in 156th. The women very much maintained their momentum from the first fixture, again winning division 3 comprehensively and they were 10th team overall in the women’s competition.

See a reel of our women racing here.

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Jonathan Williams in action

Finally to the men’s race, which had a very large field of 592 runners, and it was brilliant that we managed to turn out 17 WCH runners. Chris Green was first scorer in 21st (3rd M35), but it was good to see other WCH runners closer to him this time: Pete Grist put in one of his best cross-country performances in recent times finishing 35th (and was 3rd over 40 runner), closely followed by Matt Lusby (43rd) and Ben Tickner (48th) – great to see him back running as his last race was a Gwent League in February 2020! Next in was Alex Coombs in 51st, followed by Jon James in 82nd (1st in the M55 age group), and then Dan Maydew(129th) – also making a welcome return to cross-country racing having been absent for a while. Packing is important in these competitions, and we certainly had that with Henry Sage in 158th, David Hirst in 191st, and then very close together Laurence Badman (241st), Stuart Nash (258th), and Dan Williams (269th). Nick Stevens ran strongly to finish 311th (3rd M60 runner), followed by Ollie Frost (321st), Jonathan Williams (361st), Steve Nicholls (370th), Steve Masters (411th) and finally Mark Pople in 552nd. In terms of the team competition: the first scoring five runners finished as 7th team in division 1 (and 7th team overall); we won the M35 age group and were 2nd in the M55 age group. Really good that as a club we are putting in good performances across the age groups.

Watch the men race here.

The next fixture is at Blaise Castle in Bristol on Saturday 6th December – please let me know (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) if you want to compete and are not yet registered with the Gwent League for this year’s series.

Chris Cardiff

Another top performance from Chris Green

Wessex XC (Fixture 2)

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Harry Dawson

Fixture 2 took place at Bryanston School in Blandford, Dorset. It was great to see another strong turnout from our junior Harriers, many of whom are currently performing exceptionally well in the series standings.

More photos can be found here.

Harrier Results:

U11 Boys

3rd – Jonah Barrington – 6.57

5th – Heath Hughes-Davies – 7.01 (Currently ranked 2nd in the series)

8th – Oliver Gay – 7.13

29th – Hugo Pearse – 8.13

33rd – Maison Jennings Orr – 8.22

U11 Girls

3rd – Elizabeth Doggrell – 7.49 (Currently ranked 4th in the series)

U13 Boys

11th – Ronnie Legge – 14.09

U13 Girls

1st – Ruby Shaw – 10.57 (Currently ranked 1st in the series)

5th – Zoe Frost – 12.36 (Currently ranked 3rd in the series)

11th – Glennie Thorman – 13.00

19th – Poppy Broughton – 19.41

U15 Boys

5th – William Packer – 13.42 (Currently ranked 4th in the series)

U15 Girls

8th – Isla Hayes – 15.24

U17 Boys

3rd – Harry Dawson – 15.22 (Currently ranked 3rd in the series)

5th – Dan Bryant – 16.19

U17 Girls

2nd – Ayla Chard – 16.02 (Currently ranked 1st in the series)

3rd – Florence Tibbatts – 16.56 (Currently ranked 2nd in the series)

Senior and Masters Men

10th – Laurence Badman – 33.13

18th – Robbie Hawkins – 34.27

21st – Bailey Clark – 35.02

24th – Oliver Frost – 35.28 [3rd M45]

36th – Neil Biss – 38.07

37th – James Shaw – 38.42

Senior and Masters Women

25th – Aime Biss – 35.48

The next fixture will take place on Sunday 30th November at Kings Park. Please use your same race bib from the previous races in the series. If you are yet to register for the Wessex League this year, entries close at 17:00 on 21st November. Register here.

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Senior men’s team

Modern Pentathlon European Championships for Laser Run, Biathle and Triathle

[Report by Stuart Dowden]

5th November 2025 - Antalya, Turkey

Triathle2

Running is one part of the multi-sport event

The race was run on multiple surfaces including sand, concrete and tarmac and the swim was in the ocean at the Alanya Yacht Marina. The temperature was around 27 degrees with limited shade and slight ocean breezes. The competition standard was very high with representation from Hungary, Turkey, Italy, Monaco, Portugal, Germany, France, Czech Republic to name a few. The GB team consisted of approximately 160 athletes who qualified across a number of events through the UK.

Monday night Wells City Harriers junior coach Stuart Dowden, who is also a PentathlonGB National coach for Biathle, Triathle and Laser Run for TeamGB was coaching and assisting athletes at the competition.

Stuart Dowden

Coach Stuart Dowden with Zach and Eva

The World Championships are being held in Mossel Bay, South Africa in December and a number of YOAC and WCS athletes will also be representing Great Britain at this final event of the year.

For more information on Modern Pentathlon and Biathle, Triathle and Laser Run events please feel free to drop Stuart Dowden a line.

See more photographs on our Instagram page.

Harriers Participating:
Eva Dowden

Zachary Dowden

Henry Martin

Will Packer

Grace Speyers

Podium Harriers:

Bella Gurung - Laser Run BRONZE (3rd)

Izzy Kettle - Laser Run SILVER (2nd), Laser Run Team SILVER (2nd), Laser Run Mixed Relay SILVER (2nd), Triathle 6th, Triathle Team SILVER (2nd), Triathle Mixed Relay BRONZE (3rd)

Esme Littlechild - Laser Run Relay GOLD (1st), Triathle Team GOLD (1st), Triathle Relay GOLD (1st), Biathle SILVER (2nd)

Sadie Littlechild - Laser Run BRONZE (2nd), Laser Run Team SILVER (2nd)

Lara Pinsent - Laser Run Relay BRONZE (2nd), Triathle SILVER (2nd)

Harriet Scott - Laser Run Team GOLD (1st), Laser Run Mixed Relay SILVER (2nd), Triathle Team SILVER (2nd)

Izzy Whittle - Laser Run SILVER (2nd), Laser Run Team GOLD (1st), Laser Run Gender Relay GOLD (1st), Biathle SILVER (2nd), Biathle Team SILVER (2nd), Biathle Mixed Relay SILVER (2nd)

Medals

Medals for Izzy

Mendip Inter Area Schools XC

Mendip Schools Boys

The start of the boy’s race.

Heath Hughes-Davies was at it again winning his 13th consecutive inter area schools XC race in the Mendip area yr 5 and yr 6 race in the rain at Downside School. There were three Harriers in the top four:
Heath Hughes-Davies 1st; Jonah Barrington 2nd; and Oliver Gay 4th. Well done boys!

Sage Onitiri also had a super run, winning the yr 3 and yr 4 girls race. It's great to see so many Harriers performing well for their school.

Mendip Schools Boys1

Heath claimed his 13th consecutive schools XC win.

Christmas Meal

Don’t forget to book your Christmas Meal ticket. You can find details here.

Club Welfare

Wells City Harriers has two club welfare officers, Sarah Massey and Jon James. They are available to support any concerns athletes, parents or coaches raise or would like to discuss in relation to safety and wellbeing, and to help the club implement welfare policies and procedures. All officials and coaches have DBS clearance and have received training related to safeguarding and health and safety.

Further details can be found on the WCH website safeguarding page: Safeguarding: including links to forms where incidents and concerns can be logged.

Please do contact us if you have questions: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

News Reports

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this week’s report. If you’ve raced recently, please remember that we can only include your results if you send us a race report or photos to let us know about it. Send your race details and photos to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to be featured in the next report.

Dates For Your Diary

Here is a list of upcoming races, including WCH supported races, Somerset Series races, road relays, athletics league fixtures and other notable events. Contact club secretary Alexander Coombs if there is an event you would like adding. (SS = Somerset Series race, SRC = Somerset Road Championships)

November 2025

(SS) Sunday 23rd November 2025 - Brent Knoll

Thursday 27th November 2025 - Dave Jones Weston Prom Series (Race 3)

Sunday 30th November 2025 - Wessex League XC (Race 3 - Kings Park)

December 2025

Saturday 6th December 2025 - Gwent League XC (Fixture 3 - Blaise Castle, Bristol)

Saturday 6th December 2025 - Well City Harriers’ Annual Christmas Meal (Wells Golf Club)

Sunday 7th December 2025 - The Full Montycute 10

Sunday 7th December 2025 - Welsh Athletics Junior Open Meeting 1 (Indoor)

Wednesday 10th December 2025 - Street 5K (Race 3)

Thursday 11th December 2025 - Dave Jones Weston Prom Series (Race 4)

Saturday 13th December 2025 - Southern Athletics Indoor Combined Events and Middle Distance Championships