Northern Cross Country Champs

It gives me monumental pleasure to write this race report as on Saturday, Altrincham won the team gold medal at the Northern Cross Country Championships at Pontefract. I am reliably informed that Leeds had won the last 9 titles and were en route to 10 in a row, so to take the trophy from a team that has been so dominant in Northern running, even if it is only for one year, means a great deal.

I was incredibly proud of my team mates and put a brief message to that effect on my facebook page on Saturday, but I would just like to go in to their own stories in a little bit more depth here, as they are all quite different and make interesting reading, in my opinion.

Firstly, Dave Norman put up an incredible fight to come home 7^th. Dave is Mr Altrincham and I know how much this win would have meant to him. As many of you will know, Dave is, however, not blessed with natural speed. In fact, I think Dave's 1500m pb is about 4.05, so his mile pb wouldn't be far off 4.30 - on a track. At the end of the race on Saturday, Dave showed me his garmin, which recorded that he had run 8 miles in 5.04 pace - over rough and undulating cross country! In other words, Dave was operating for over 40 minutes at a pace very close to his maximum - you can't believe what that must have felt like, but Im pretty sure it hurt. This was a big turnaround for Dave and his best run since last February, no question. Even before Christmas, he was struggling with his form and I beat him comfortably at a Manchester League in December. On Saturday, I never even got close. When we went up to collect the trophy, I made it clear that Dave should pick it up but unfortunately it ended up in Andy Norman's hands - for about one second...before he dropped it on the floor into the mud. The look of horror on Simon Deakin's face, who had polished the trophy that morning was justifiably one of shock! Needless to say, Simon will be pulling out all the stops to make sure Leeds get it back next year.

Second home for us was Mohammed Abu-Rezeq. A few people are probably wondering about Mo's background as he is new to the Northern running scene. Mo has been in the country for a while now as he moved here from abroad to live near Hyde, as his wife is British. After his arrival, he made an enquiry at Dave's running store also in Hyde and asked if he could join a local club, so naturally Dave ensured he joined us. Mo has been training with us too and although his English is not fluent, he is a really nice bloke and has been great to train with as we are well matched (he was 4 places in front of me on Sunday). However, things have not been easy for Mo and the recent arrival of his child has meant he has been struggling to make all the sessions and on the night before Ribble Valley in December he didn't sleep a wink, as his child was sick all night. You can only imagine what it must be like bringing up a child in a strange country, when English isn't your first language and Im glad that the common interest in running has brought him to Altrincham and I hope that we have helped him settle into his new life in the UK.

Andy Norman is one of the most talented people I have ever trained with. I know that he will be frustrated to be 27^th, as his natural ability warrants better than that (and he probably hates a 34 year old dufus like me going past him after 2 laps), but hopefully he accepts that on the day, as always, he ran himself into the ground and gave everything, which was crucial for the team. I hope that this result will spur him on to continue to train sensibly and not go mad in his quest to fulfil his ability. Above all, I really hope he re-considers his decision to do the Manchester Marathon as that is an accident waiting to happen and in my opinion would reduce his chances of success in what I think are his better distances of 5k and 10k.

Like Mohammed, James Reed is another relative newcomer to Alty. Since he joined a couple of years ago, he has been at University. James also has a young family and things are not easy for him. I spoke to him on the Tuesday before the race and he described his build up as less than ideal. He has been under pressure with his studies and had been ill twice since Christmas. Had I had James preparation, I think I would have been looking to pull out and I was quite worried that he might not perform on the day, after I spoke with him. I was completely wrong -on the last switch back, I turned around to see James only yards behind me and was hugely encouraged to push on myself! Amazingly, James is seemingly oblivious to his ability and is very under-stated about his running. I think we will see a lot more of him in the next few years.

Finally, I was proud of my good mate Nick Leigh, who closed out our team in 50^th place. Nick's run on Saturday epitomised the team effort. The course, which was firm and fast, didn't suit Nick at all, but he ensured that he finished as high as possible on the day with an all out effort. I hope he appreciated me demanding from the people at the finish that they take my chip off in double quick time so I could get back down the course to shout him home. Maybe I should have run faster myself if I had that much energy left!

I would also like to mention our 7^th place runner too, without whom I don't think our success would have been possible. Although he went home without a medal, the looming spectre of Si Marwood, served to spur everyone else on in the team. If we had each finished 8 places lower, we would have gone home without a medal, never mind the winning trophy, and that shows how important back up and internal competition can be, at any club. We arent blessed with strength in depth and I hope that this success encourages a few more runners to make the step up to get in the scoring team in the future. The Altrincham team doesn't end with the runners however. There have been a lot of people behind the scenes who have helped us all over this and previous seasons and in particular I would like to mention the likes of Alan Hardman, Dave Rudd, Mike Welford, Alan Barlow, Jeff Norman, Adrian Fuller and Mansel Pope who, together with many other people from our club and indeed other teams, gave us plenty of support on the day. I got frequent shouts from members of other teams like Pete Riley From Stockport, Dave Rogers from Sale and Duncan Mason from Salford. If only rival supporters in other sports behaved like that.

So, that just leaves one person... er me. I was so pleased with the team result, that Im not going to go into my own performance too much here. 18^th in a good field on Saturday was a decent result. I also think it would be extremely unfair of me to speculate about where I might have come, as that would do a disservice to some of the many fine runs that people had in front of me. For example, Gary Priestley, who is a really nice lad was 1 in front of me - I was trying my nuts off on the last lap to get close to him but I just couldn't do it and he should rightly be pleased with his 17^th place. I also hope he remembers the conversation that we had on a pre-Christmas run in Horwich...

Other people I would like to pick out for great performances on Sunday:

Steve Vernon - an amazing runner, as I was warming up, I was thinking that if there was one person who would be most disappointed with the conditions being fast and firm, it would be Steve, but he showed that he is no one trick pony with a superb display. Every time I went past him on a switch back, he was at the front and to win from gun to tape against a class act like James Wilkinson is a great run

Pat Martin - I have run a fair bit with Pat and in 2010, I shared a room with him at the Bristol 10k. On that day, I ran my pb of 29.32 and Pat was about a minute behind, I think. Since then, Pat has made big strides forward and I tip my hat to him for doing so through nothing other than hard work and graft.

Carl Hardman- good grief, what a talent. As far as I was aware, Carl has only been training for a few weeks, so unless he has been doing 100 mile weeks in secret, (which knowing Carl Im sure he hasn't) that was some performance. Time to start training properly Carl!

Andy Ward - here's me getting all excited about being a vet 35 in 6 months and ripping up the vets category - Andy is 42 and already smashing it up. He made a lot of us look very silly on Saturday - I hope he retires soon!!!

Well done to everyone else who ran on Saturday, there were many other fine performances - roll on the National.