A number of the Wells City Harrier women are in line to gain awards at the Somerset Race Series presentations to be held on Sunday November 27th. The awards will be made straight after one of the best races on the calendar: the Brent Knoll Fell Race.

The Harrier's Jenny Moore leads the way with the Somerset Series once again. (see below for standings after 15 races). She has won this Series trophy 5 previous times (out of 15 Series) which reflects great consistency as well as a top performance level. Team-mate Katrina Prior is in 2nd place with only Running Forever's Sally Tovey any realistic chance of overtaking her. Tracey Halliday also features for the Harriers and needs one more good race on Sunday- which may be enough for her to clinch the top F45 award. Kay Franklin and Jenny Adams have also been going well again this year and also look to feature in the end of Series results.

For the men, Nathan Young  (Bristol & West) looks like he'll capture the trophy with Mark Wills (Yeovil TRR) his main rival this year, and Peter Fews (V50, u/a), Mike Harvey (M40, YTRR) and Colin Williams (V60,Uk.net) leading in the age categories. The Brent Knoll Race starts at 11.30am and the Series presentations will be held at 1.00pm. 

The Series was established by Wells City Harriers some 16 years ago working with other Somerset Clubs to jointly promote friendly rivalry and market a set of races across the County. Discussions will commence soon with the other Clubs about the format of the Series in 2012. Any comments or thoughts about the Series to Paul.

Other interesting news

Three Harriers were up to the challenge of the Castle Drogo 10 mile Fell race last Sunday. Amongst the 495 finishers we had Ian Biggs finishing in 91^st place with his excellent 81.30 clocking, whilst Andrew Pate was 236^th in 95.05, and junior kit manager Alice Knight was a great 99.13 for 262^nd place. Ian is in training for the London Marathon and that sort of race is perfect at this point in his preparations.

Andy Hennessy, one of the Club’s Hon Life Members, and who has competed for the Club over a 20 year span (is he really that old?) was featured in last week’s Athletics Weekly under an article featuring the top 100 Club stalwarts or servants. Well done Andrew! Of course his mum, Annette, who is still a regular at the Wednesday sessions should also have been in that listing! If you are new to the Club and want to check who else is an Hon Life Member of the Harriers why not check out the 'About Wells City Harriers' tab.

A set of photographs from the recent Gwent XC League at University of Bath will soon feature on the front page of the website. Team photographer Simon Harris can't promise to have caught all 56 Harriers that competed that day but there is a good spread of ages featured. Cross-country runners are reminded to let Geoff or Paul know if they want  minibus transport to the Swansea fixture on December 4th by next Monday (Nov 28th) so that we can decide if we need 1 or 2 minibusses. We are also keen to encourage a non-competing parent or two to volunteer to drive so that we don't have tired drivers on the way back.The deadlines for members advising team managers about entering the XC Championship races are coming up soon. The dates of the Championships (& deadlines for advising team managers) are: the Somerset Champs on Dec 11th (Dec 4th); SW Champs at Bicton on Jan 8th (Dec 11th) ; & Southerns at Brighton on Sat Jan 28th (Dec 11th). Please confirm as soon as possible rather than leaving to the last minute. Team manager details are found on the 'About the Club' tab.

This coming weekend a number of the talented Harrier juniors will be attending a coached session provided by the Somerset Schools Association;  and we also have the prospect of one or more of the Harrier senior men getting selected again for TeamGB. The Liverpool McCain Cross Challenge is coming up this Saturday (Nov 26^th). The race doubles as the trial race for the TeamGB selection for the European XC Championships and we wish the Tickners well at this race.

New volunteers are sought to step forward to help with the local fun runs organised with Harrier support at Wells (end of May/early June) and at Shepton Mallet (beginning of October). Anyone interested in helping with Race Directing should contact Club members Mike Brown/Andrew Deamer (Wells FR) or Sue Cook/Rachel Wray (Shepton FR) for a copy of the job description and other information. It is possible that the roles can be shared between 2 people.

The Club's training sessions this week (w/c Nov 21st) have seen over 120 Club members taking part (aged 8 to 68) - that's some turn-out. With a month to go to Christmas we'd like all Club members to make a note that Clive is organising a friendly parlauf event (that's a two person team selected at random in competititon) on Tuesday Dec 27th 11.00am. Suitable for all ages & abilities. See Events & Results.