The legend that is the Southerns when it is at Parliament Hill was enjoyed by only a select few of the Club’s senior men this year. Team scoring is for teams of 6 here and with 18 entered that shouldn’t have been a problem, but with 2 DNFs (did-not-finish; I had an excuse: my shoe fell apart!) as well as 9 DNSUs (did-not-show-up; a variety of excuses or lack thereof) and 1 DNR (did-not-register; David Reader started the race with an ankle chip but finished without one), we were left with exactly 6 in the official results: 58th place, our worst since 2012!
But what am I moaning about? Not the mud certainly which was at its stickiest, and at least with my running shoes in the first bin we came across I don’t have to worry about cleaning them. Also on a positive note, there was an impressive first cross country outing of the season from Chris Hovenden, out-sprinting Tarbo at the finish to be our third finisher (second in the results). Post race analysis continued long into the night at various Hampstead hostelries.
Results
111 Dean Lacy 54:25 438 Chris Hovenden 1:01:48 439 Tarbo Fukazawa 1:01:49 653 Christian Poulton 1:06:12 1002 Graham Maynard 1:17:37 1033 Martin Hawkins 1:18:57