Another great performance from Holly Dixon: third in the South of Thames five miler. It makes a nice change to have a cross country race where, although scored separately, the men and women all run together; of the team of twelve men that we took to Morden only two, James MacDonald and Dave Worden, managed to finish ahead of Holly. Next came David Reader and Christian Poulton completing the four-to-score team which finished 12th while further back Alan Black had the honour of completing the eight-to-score team which was 8th. Holly was backed up by her mum and her aunt but unfortunately that still left us one short of a complete women’s team, perhaps next year?
Both the men’s and women’s races were won by Aldershot, Farnham and District runners (Joe Marwood and Emily Wickes) although Kent AC dominated the team competitions with an incredible 13 of the first 25 finishers in the men’s race.
The South of Thames races are very definitely “old school”, and that is one of the things we like about them: entries are by post, payment is by cheque (remember those?) results is by a finishing disk system (what’s a chip?) and your numbers are just numbers, no sponsors’ names or any of the other nonsense you get elsewhere.
Another good thing about these races is that they are at different venues each year; to most of us Morden was only known as the place at the end of the Northern line, if you end up there it is probably because you have fallen asleep, but Josh who used to live there informed us that it is also known for being the home of Britain’s largest mosque which we walked past on the way from the tube station to the park. The park itself is hardly one of London’s most picturesque and the gradients of the course were all quite gradual but there was plenty of mud and surface water to make for a decent challenge.
The next South of Thames race will be at another new venue, Lloyd Park in Croydon, it’s on the 21st December, put it in your diary!
Results – Women
3 Holly Dixon 30:38 48 Sue Dixon 37:08 75 Sally Carr 41:00
Men 27 James MacDonald 28:59 50 David Worden 30:17 57 David Reader 30:46 83 Christian Poulton 31:54 111 Graham Maynard 33:13 118 Joshua Lawless 33:37 160 Clem Dixon 36:09 183 Alan Black 37:49 192 Martin Hawkins 38:36 205 Ian McCarthy 41:09 215 Peter Hadley 43:58 223 Mike Simmons 46:35
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