Kent Cross Country League, Tonbridge

Photos of the race

Saturday 29th October was the second of the Kent League Cross Country fixtures at Somerhill School, Tonbridge. Despite being warned about the infamous hill, a record number of Harriers turned out, several of whom had never run in a cross country race before.

The M70 now run in the 5K race with the senior women and for the second time running Eric Schofield finished in first place. According to some of the spectators he jogged around the course effortlessly beating many women half his age! In this race Eric was joined by three other M70 Tunbridge Wells Harriers so between them they scored 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th in this category. M70 results: Eric Schofield 27:50 (1), John Johnson 33:05 (2), Graham Brooks 39:55 (3) and Bryon (Spud) Taylor 42:52 (4).

Eleven Harriers took part in the women's race and a record 99 women finished. (Last year in very similar conditions there were only 70 so the sport is clearly gaining popularity). In her debut cross country race Alice Heather-Hayes had a fantastic run finishing in 5th position overall and second F35 in a time of 22:35 Another fine performance from Pru Clements resulted in her finishing 19th and Jeannette White finished 32nd improving on her 2010 time by almost three minutes. Alice, Pru and Jeannette formed the scoring team of three who came 4th out of 13 teams, an improvement of three places on the last race. It was also the first cross country race for Kim Deeney, Gemma Scott and Anita Hanchet so PBs all round.

As well as being a clear, sunny day it was unseasonally mild which undoubtedly had an effect on a few of the runners in the men's 9.5K race. The four lap course comprised eight hills in total so was not for the faint hearted, but there was a record turn-out from the Harriers, putting 33 out in the senior men's race. Three of them had run Beachy Head marathon just one week earlier but still rose to the challenge of Somerhill. There was even some murmurs amongst the other runners for the sheer number of our field, likely helped by the stand-out nature of our deckchair strip!

This year there were 191 finishers in the men's race, a huge increase on last year's 150. Both Terry Everest and Stuart Shields put in sterling performances and their efforts were such that they collapsed over the finish line. Chris Wolton led the Harriers home in a very impressive time of 37:11 finishing 21st. Joining him in the '4 to score' team were Scott Richardson (27th), Terry Everest (53rd) and Dave Hadaway (55th) who moved up one position to 7th out of 18. The remaining eight in the duodec (12 to score) were Simon Whitaker (56), John Law (68), Tim Lucas (70), Stuart Shields (74), Daryl Palfrey (81), Dan Watt (88), Lloyd Collier (89) and Dave Langridge (94). They moved up one position to third out of five.

The full results are on the KCAA website.

Reminder to everyone entered and who got their numbers on the day - ** KEEP HOLD OF YOUR NUMBERS UNTIL THE NEXT RACE ** Saves us from running half the race before we've even started to get you new race numbers.

Thanks to Sian for writing the report this time, hope to see everyone on Wednesday, if the photos come out well there should be another showing of the fun and games that evening.

Finally, many thanks to everyone who turned up and for all your great performances on the day, I'll now endeavour to do a lot more quality
hill training so I at least get in the 12 to score!

Hope you can all make it for the third fixture at Danson Park on 12th November - the hills in that course will seem like undulations in comparison with today.