Merchant Taylors’ Cross Country event and Virtual Races

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ATW Cross Country event 31/10/20

Active Training World organised a cross country open race within the grounds of Merchant Taylors school in Northwood on Saturday 31st October. TVH had 7 senior athletes competing and one young athlete, Minna Williams in the U13 Girls race.

Report from Hugo Cayssials;

Saturday marked one of the first cross country races back, hours before the announcement of the second lockdown. The pre-race was naturally ripe with emotions, just a few days after the tragic loss of our club legend, Chris Smith.

We can only thank the organisers for setting up a minute of applause for an athlete who made an impact on all the people he met, of which there were so many throughout the various cross country courses up and down the country.

Nothing will bring him back, but we can do our best to uphold the values of one of the kindest men we were given the chance to meet.

The race itself was ‘the new normal’ format of runners going off in waves of 6 based on predicted times. Antonio Silva finished 3rd overall in 25:52, Hugo Cayssials 7th, in 26:21, Chris Thomas 15th in 27:51, followed by Andrew Mitchell in 27th in 29:06. Shane Bloomer rounded out our scoring team of 5 in 76th place in 32:59. On the women’s side, Louise Vanwildermeersch took 41st spot in 38:05 and Christine Munden finished in 74th in 47:07.

Thank you to ATW for doing their best to put on events for the athletes, and we look forward to our next outing on the mud.

Applause for Chris Smith

 

Young Athletes Virtual Race –  Middlesex County AA organised another virtual race for the clubs in the county with timed performance in the final 2 weeks of October.

Fast improving young athlete Xanthe Greenfields ran 6:53 in the U11 Girls 1500m race finishing 5th out of 41 athletes.

In the U13 Girls 1500m race Natasha Bennett finished 2nd in 5:37 and Minna Williams was 9th out of 27 athletes in 6:02.     U15 athletes competed over 3,000m and Dominic Johnson ran a very similar time to the virtual races in September with 11:46.

TVH again had the winning team in the U15 Girls race this time led by Anna Kelly with 11:58, supported by Ava Levy (12:33) and Charlotte Brown (12:40) on a very wet and windy Halloween.