Ladies lead the way for Leighton in competitive cross-country

As the host club for the second round of the Chiltern Cross Country League, it also combined with the British Cross Challenge and so included some international athletes among the local club runners.

The results will show that LBAC had two particular stand-out age groups.

Firstly the six girls who donned the purple and yellow for the U13 girls ran brilliantly and finished in their highest position since we were promoted to Division 1 back in 2010.

Niquole Carter and Isabel Law pushed each other all the way to finish in 15th and 16th respectively, just one second apart.

Two doesn’t make a team though and Katy Dixon (30th) and Julia Bell (42nd) meant LBAC closed the scoring team very quickly. Rebecca Knibb was just 20 seconds behind Julia and Imogen Chesterton finished strongly in 58th to round off an excellent performance.

The other brilliant performance was from the senior women. The team finished seventh for the future, but with a best ever turn-out of 14 runners – this is more than 10 per cent of the Division 1 field.

It meant LBAC finished seventh overall, but the field was so tight, and their points haul left them just 28 behind fourth spot.

With this level of participation and the brilliant improvements that all the women are showing the only way is up.

With 25 senior men racing, there are far too many to name individually but we had a debut from Mark Castleton, who has joined us from St Alban’s.

Sam Nicholas made his first race as an U20 and Ben Corfield trekked down from Sheffield for the occasion.

Meanwhile, performance of the day was from Charlie Mead, who having finished 12th for the club in Oxford had his brother firmly in his sights as he came home in 72nd place as LBAC’s sixth scorer.

There were plenty of other good performances in the other races too, with an excellent 66 LBAC members out on the various courses from the U11s to the seniors, leaving the club sixth after two fixtures.