Royston Sunday League: 12 March 2023

Women’s Team

Sunday’s re-scheduled XC race on the mammoth hills of Royston was the fourth and final race in the Sunday League calendar. Several of our team already had prior commitments so a small team of six arrived on a sunny and relatively warm day to tackle this course.

We managed to pack our first three finishers (and all the scoring vets!) into the top ten with Kat Alpe leading the way in third place. Anja Greenwood was fourth and Anna Sikorska was a fantastic tenth place (2nd V45 and best ever league position for her). Beverley Tipping ran for us instead of a planned cycle event and finished a brilliant 30th. She was closely followed by Christine Hawker who was our final scorer in 36th place. Rosemary Bains had a solid run to finish 41st (out of 77 women and 2nd in her age-group).

I am very proud of this team for taking the time to travel such a long way and run a pretty brutal course at the very end of the XC season. Incredibly all but one of this team had doubled-up and also run in the previous day’s XC relay races at Wanstead!

The final overall league results are not in yet but we have almost undoubtedly won the female vets category and quite possibly the overall women’s category also (tbc). A very nice way to wrap up what has been a challenging XC season for the women’s team.

Men’s Team

This rescheduled race at Royston was probably a race too far for us but also for most of the other teams. Our team was decimated by unavailability so we are very grateful to the 11 men that made it. Every one of them ran their hearts out and although we haven’t yet got the final results with team placings my calculations make us 2nd but that may not be reliable.

The scorers were Dave Kunzmann, Scott Aiken, Ben Allen, Will Rowley, Matt Bannon, David Birks, John Rose and Stuart Manktelow. A different looking list of scorers but fantastic to see. The Vets may also have come 2nd on a quick calculation with Scott, Matt, David B and John scoring. Our other runners who all did well were Paul Bracken, Robert Pick and Robin Tremaine.

Can I end this final league cross country report of the season with some congratulations and thanks. Special thanks to Scott for leading the team so ably, and the same goes to Anja for her hard work with the ladies in a difficult year. Congratulations to Matt Bannon for the only person to have turned out in every league race this season, that is 16 races.

Thanks to our scorers, particularly Dawn and Chris who have covered most of the races but also others who have covered some of the races including Robert Sikorski who worked hard on Sunday. All those who made our own Trent Park race such a success. Thanks also to our supporters of whom there were plenty on Sunday.

Finally congratulations to all our trophy winners, of whom there are many over the various leagues and our own Club Championship. Pride of place probably goes to Kat Alpe who was top lady in the Chingford League, almost certainly 1st V35 in Sunday League and our own Club Champion lady. Now let’s look forward to the Midweek League.

Anja Greenwood and Chas Taylor