Great TVH performances and turnout at Home Met League cross country
Start Fitness Metropolitan League Match 4, Wormwood Scrubs 12th January 2019
TVH hosted the 4th Start Fitness Met League fixture on a dry breezy day at Wormwood Scrubs and for the second successive year there was a record number of competitors with 1,243 runners finishing; 119 Under 11s, 118 Under 13s, 157 Under 15s & Under 17s, 293 in the women’s race and 547 in the men’s race to be exact! The event has grown rapidly in recent years, alongside the popularity of parkruns; there were 80% more young athletes, 80% more women and 50% more men competing compared to the corresponding fixture at the Scrubs in 2015. With very little rain in the 2 weeks before the event, the Scrubs was mostly dry, making for some fast races.
Men’s Race – with an excellent turnout of 33 TVH men the team performed very well in both the Div 1 senior competition and the veteran competition, finishing 3rd senior team and 5th veteran team in Div 1 . We had 12 men in the top 85 including veteran athletes Andrew Mitchell and Naol Abagibe with Gordon Low the first over 50 in an impressive 130th place.
Dan Mulryan raced as a guest for this race finishing in 9th place in a high quality field, followed by Hugo Cayssials with another good run in 15th place, Sayed Yusuf finishing strongly in 25th ahead of a good group with James Ellis 32nd , Connor Kissane-Wood coming back from injury in 36th and Rob Collins 39th . Michael Cameron was also in the top 50 in 48th place, Daniel Garcia-Rasines in 54th, Oli Newton 71st, Michael Crone 72nd, Calum Nicol 75th with Andrew and Naol making up the scoring 12 in 79th and 85th.
Women’s Race – Emily Dudgeon finished an impressive 3rd in her first race for the club, pushing hard for 2nd place on the second lap. Emily normally competes over 800m and ran a couple of parkruns on Wormwood Scrubs in December. Steph Ainley is more at home on muddy hilly courses and so was happy with 10th place on the fast course, Chloe Baker had a strong run in 28th , Maddie Turner followed up her Middx County race with 46th place and Joanna Mobed made it 5 TVH women in the top 50. Team manager Siana Jones made up the 6 to score team in 95th place with the team in 5th place in Div 1. Under 20 Rosie Vallance also ran well in 125th with Fran Lou in 138th after a warm-up parkrun on the Scrubs in the morning.
Full results at: https://www.thepowerof10.info/results/results.aspx?meetingid=253080
Young Athletes – well done to the 38 TVH young athletes who ran in the Under 11 to Under 17 races.
Under 11 Boys – with Reggie Rock finishing 4th it was nice to have a good back-up behind him. Wilf Howad-Vyse had a great run to finish 14th and Ollie Seraj was close behind in 19th place. Having his first outing for TVH, Oliver Worley also looked promising with his 27th place. In 40th position Tommy Cogan brought the team home in fourth place.
Under 11 Girls – after winning the Middx County championships race the week before, Molly McCormack had some classy opposition this time. She was up in the leading group and just pipped on the line in blanket finish for 2nd, 3rd and 4th places. Skye Bishop was disappointed to finish in seventh place but after the Christmas break she still did well. Having her best performance of the season, Farrar Ceric was 15th and helped the team to second place. In 38th place Emmeline Low also had a good run and Iris Williams in her first race did well to finish 48th.
Under 13 Boys – with only three boys in the under 13 race the Valley team were way down in eighth place but individually Max Bishop had one of his best runs to finish 5th overall (and followed that up with a 2:18 indoors 800m the next day). Backed up by Rory McConnon having a good run for 19th place we were a boy short of a team with Dylan Bilboul our third scorer in 45th place.
Under 13 Girls – on the other hand we had a great turn-out in the under 13 girls race with nine runners. We even had two teams scoring in 2nd and 7th places. Anna Kelly again showed she is in fine form with another 8th place Met League finish and with Charlotte Edge, 11th and Olivia Sparks, 17th having great runs for the team’s 2nd place. Just behind them the ‘B’ team packed together with Maya Sutaria 20th, Amelia Seaton having a great run for 22nd and Skyla Robertson was 29th, just beating Charlotte Brown, 30th. Charlotte Long had her first outing and was 42nd , Bronte Bennett also managed a good finish to be 52nd.
Under 15 / Under 17 Boys – our Junior men were also up against some good opposition. Louis Hodge fought well to be with the leading group and although he dropped back to finish 12th he was the first under 15 to finish. Basil Rock had a much better run than the last Met League race at Hillingdon where he was 50th. He was pleased to finish 38th this time. Just behind him Will Palmer also ran better to move through the field to finish 40th. This time Aidan Ferrand had a better run to finish in 54th place, seven in front of Joe Nixon who had a bad start. Romadan Sherif had a steady run for 74th place.
Under 15 / Under 17 Girls –
Again Jasmine Palmer had a brilliant race to finish third in the Junior women’s event. She was the first Under 15 in the Met League for the second consecutive time. Not bad for an athlete in her first cross country season. Sarah Kebbell was also right up at the front of the race and was pleased with her fifth place. This time it was Niamh Murphy’s turn to bring the team home in second place. This meant that Melina Duer led the ‘B’ team home. She was one place behind Niamh. Maddie Casey finished a brilliant 23rd and Lily Dafter also had her best run of the season with her 29th place. Capucine Rousset had a better run than recently but Olivia Colegrave seemed unable to get going this time. Also having a tough time Aramay Robertson kept fighting for 42nd place and was just in front of Zenia Gordon.
U11B 4 R Rock 5:59; 14 W Howard-Vyse 6:29; 19 O Seraj 6:38; 40 T Cogan 7:23. 55 Finish. Team 4th
U11G 4 M McCormack 6:09; 7 S Bishop 6:18; 15 F Ceric 6:51; 38 E Low 7:31; 49 I Williams 7:44. 64 Finish. Team 2nd
U13B 5 M Bishop 12:10; 19 R McConnon 13:03; 45 D Bilboul 14:31. 62 Finish. Team 8th
U13G 8 A Kelly 13:33; 11 C Edge 13:46; 17 O Sparks 14:22; 20 M Sutaria 14:31; 22 A Seaton 14:34;
29 S Robertson 14:42; 30 C Brown 14:51; 42 C Long 15:22; 52 B Bennett 16:28. 56 Finish. Teams 2nd & 7th
U15/U17 Men 12 L Moore 14:08; 38 B Rock 15:21; 40 W Palmer 16:28;54 A Ferrand 16:13; 61 J Nixon 16:33 74 R Sherif 17:20. 96 Finish. Team 11th.
U15/U17 Women 3 J Palmer 15:43; 5 S Kebbell 16:00; 17 N Murphy 17:14; 18 M Duer 17:19; 23 M Casey 17:30; 29 L Dafter 17:55; 34 C Rousset 18:09; 39 O Colegrave 18:49; 42 A Robertson 19:07; 44 Z Gordon 19:13. 61 Finish. Teams 2nd& 7th.