The Chingford League season almost came to its conclusion on Saturday, just the relays to come, but the individual trophies for the season were decided. This race is always a bit of a burn up and attracts quite a few runners who love the fast flat 5 mile but are not seen on the cross country circuit, Our team wasn’t as strong as it might have been with so much emphasis on the Met League and Sunday League races to come and although we were reasonably well placed in most categories we weren’t going to come out on top in the Chingford League.

The men had a decent number with 19 runners in all but slightly under strength at the scoring end. Our A team scorers were Andy Naylor, Raul Simmons-Perez, Will Rowley, Paul Brennan, Jim Arrowsmith and Scott Aiken. We finished 4th in Division 1 which is a decent result. This leaves us 3rd for the season on the same points as Southwark but ahead on countback. As far as Vets are concerned our scoring team was Andy, Paul, Jim and Scott together with Paul Ward and Robert Sikorski. They finished 3rd on the day and sit 2nd for the season but only just ahead of a couple of teams so we need a special trunout and performance at the relays to hold on to that. Our B team did quite well and could figure in the top 3 at the end of the season with a good relay effort.

The women were under strength with only 12 finishers and would have been stronger with 3 runners who didn’t make it to the finish, I hope you are feeling better girls. They finished 7th on the day and are 6th for the season. A good relay should see them move up and keep them away from any relegation issues. Our scorers were Mahdiyyah Banoo, Anja Greenwood, Anna Sikorska, Sue Thomas, Theodosia Green and Meneka Sidhu. When it comes to the Vets team it was the same as the Senior team with the exception of Julie Mimnagh replacing Mahdiyyah. They finished 9th out of the 22 clubs taking part. They sit 7th for the season and hopefully will make up places with relay results. The other 6 finishers who didn’t score for the A team all scored for the B team and they did really well to finish 10th of the 22. Never tell me it’s not worth running, you do count.

This race marked the end of the individual competition and we came out with a number of great successes. Before I go into that could I just give a shout out to Jess Naylor who was our only Junior competitor in the girls U11 and she ran well in mid field. Our individual winners over the season were Andy Naylor with a great 2nd in the Vet40, Scott Aiken winner Vet50, Paul Ward 2nd Vet60 and Theodosia Green winner Vet60. All fantastic performances over the season against very tough competition. The relays don’t impact these individual competitions but trophies will be presented at the end of the relays. Photos from the day are up on the Club’s Photo Gallery and our thanks go to Grainne Jones for taking the camera and doing a great job, See you all at the relays and before that for the final Met League and Sunday League races.