On Saturday, Harriette Woolley and I travelled to Horspath, Oxford – home of Oxford City AC – for the combined SEAA cross country meeting hosting both the Inter Counties and Masters’ Championships. Following her performances in the Kent Cross Country League this season, Harriette had been selected to run for Kent in the Inter Counties, and I was running in the South of England Masters’ in my new M55 age category. Julian Rendall from Tonbridge AC joined us on the trip, and having both taken bronzes in our age cats in the Kent Masters’ the week before, we hoped to be in contention. The short version of the report for the three of us is as follows:
| South of England AA Masters’ Championship (10k) | ||||
| 5th | Julian Rendall | Tonbridge AC | 32:26 | (3rd M40, bronze medal) |
| 18th | Andy Howey | TWH | 34:26 | (1st M55, gold medal) |
| South of England AA Inter Counties Championship (6k) | ||||
| DNS | Harriette Woolley | TWH | ||
The longer version of the report (if you have the time or inclination)…
The traffic was reasonable, we arrived in good time, and there was plenty of parking at the BMW Mini factory at Cowley. What could possibly go wrong?
First job was to get our numbers, so we headed across the windswept field towards the KCAA flag to pick up Harriette’s. Apparently, it wasn’t available, but we were told to wait for the Senior Women’s Team Manager for an explanation. When he arrived, he told us that Harriette hadn’t been entered (Cock Up No.1). Having used the SEAA online entry system myself (three attempts to enter, with the page requiring downloadable instructions to use, and no arrival of the promised confirmation email), I can understand that they may have had problems. Nevertheless, they should have checked, and should also have contacted Harriette earlier than the email sent at 10am that morning – which helpfully had no content anyway. I have to say, I’ve never seen her so angry, but she remained commendable calm during the ensuing ‘discussions’!
We settled on the Team Manager going to retrieve a race number for one of the Kent no-show athletes from HQ, and then allowing Harriette to run, providing she stepped off the course prior to the finish funnel. That way, she’d at least get a run having made the effort of a 200 mile round trip, but wouldn’t affect the no-show runner’s Power of 10. Julian got his number from Mark P-K of TAC, so I went in search of mine at the track pavilion. I found a woman clutching a very large pile of envelopes, one for each club and all in alphabetical order. I asked for the TWH envelope, and she started searching: Abingdon, Aldershot, Barnet… I told her I could see the T’s at the bottom of the pile… Bedford, Blackheath, Brighton, Cambridge, Central Park, Chiltern, Colchester… I shut up and waited as the queue grew longer behind me.
Harriette and I went for a warm-up to recce the course, having heard reports that the course maps posted on the wall outside the HQ bore little resemblance to the routes that the younger age groups in the early races were running. After a start loop around the sports ground, we crossed open farmland and reached a wooded hill. When I last ran there four years ago, this was where the M50 front runners all went off course due to lack of marshals. It didn’t appear on Harriette’s 6km course map, so we headed back. The path back to the finish was extremely claggy – all in all, a very testing course.
We got back to see Mel and Tara Taylor’s lads Matthew and Henry storming into the finish in the U15 Boys’ race. Matthew took the silver medal in a sprint finish behind his Kent League nemesis Louis Small from Ashford AC, and Henry was third scorer in 7th to take Kent to the team title.
On to our races, and the Senior Women’s race in the Inter Counties set off at a fast pace, with Harriette settling into the middle of the pack. By this time, Mel Taylor was trying to get Matthew included in the U15B results as they’d left him out of the version that had been posted on the wall! (Cock Up No.2). I busied myself with getting ready for my race which was straight after Harriette’s, and was disappointed to find a single number in the envelope (green for M50), and no back category number. All of the masters from M40 to M69 were in the one race, except that meant it wouldn’t be a race, since you’d have no idea who your nearest competitors were unless you could see their front number – how utterly pointless (Cock Up No.3). With no idea of who I’d be up against, I just decided to go hard from the gun… no change there then.
Harriette finished (or rather ran down the side of the funnel) in the second half of the field, placing behind runners she’d usually beat and looking about as motivated as you’d expect in the circumstances. Her Kent vest doesn’t seem to be that lucky, with her three selections resulting in a race cancelled by snow, a bad run and not being entered. As Julian and I set off to the start, she let us know that they had indeed done two laps of the steep wooded hill, completely at odds with the useless course maps (Cock Up No.4).
The men’s masters’ race set off at a similarly rapid pace for the first of the two laps, and I found myself in the top dozen or so, with Julian ahead in the top five. I gave it some welly up through the woods, and managed to pass Ben Reynolds (the previous week’s winner) and Craig Sharp (M40) of Central Park (ex-Dartford), but I didn’t recognise anyone else so had no clue who were M50s, let alone M55s. I could have been leading, or I could have been outside the top ten – it might as well have been a bloody time trial. Towards the end of the first lap as we ran along the claggy twisting footpath, I was passed by an Oxford City runner that I recognised from the SE Masters Track Final in September, and then Craig and Ben (who thankfully isn’t 55 till January!) drifted past. I kept them at a reasonable distance ahead, but put a lot into the last hill to hold my position so couldn’t claw any back. On the run in, having passed a chap with ‘M70 protest runner’ pinned to the back of his vest, I glanced back to see a white number approaching, but decided to give him a sprint anyway. Good thing too, as when I turned round in the funnel to shake his hand, it was an M50 white number on a green background! Looking about at those who’d finished, I reckoned on about fifth M50, which I was happy with. Unlike the M70 runner who ran one lap as an M60 in protest for there being no M70 category. He thanked me – and several others – at the finish for patting him on the back in support as I ran past. I won’t put that down as a cock-up, just an extraordinarily bad decision on the part of the SEAA. Your running doesn’t appear to matter to them once you reach a certain age, which is strange because most of the SEAA bring to mind Will Carling’s famous quote about the RFU.
It didn’t seem as though the results would be out any time soon, so Julian and I went for a warm-down. When we got back, the small HQ room where the prize presentation was due to take place was starting to turn into the Black Hole of Calcutta with a heaving mass of steaming runners. Still 45 minutes after the race, they had no idea when they’d get any results, let alone present the medals (Cock Up No.5), so we – like many others, extricated ourselves from the scrum and buggered off home.
Later that evening, the results came out. I had finished in 18th overall and 6th M50, or rather they listed Tony Fulbrook from TAC in that position because they’d recorded the wrong number (Cock Up No.6). He hadn’t even gone to the race. With Tony having been entered as an M50, they awarded 1st M55 to a guy from Haywards Heath who’d finished behind me (Cock Up No.7). A flurry of emails later, the result had been amended, but whether I’ll ever see that gold medal is another thing entirely! Julian finished 5th, but didn’t realise there were two M45s just ahead, so he took the M40 bronze.
So a successful day’s racing against all the odds – for those that were entered. Commiserations to poor Harriette, but sincere thanks for driving us all that way, and in such horrible weather on the way back. She might even get a Man vs Horse nomination.
I award the incompetence title to the SEAA. The KCAA were close on the magnitude of their screw-up, but the SEAA took it on the sheer consistency of their performance.
Andy Howey