Birmingham League race 4 - 10th February 2018
The fate of the men's cross country team came down to wire on Saturday. Having been in the relegation places all season we needed a supreme effort at Wolverhampton in the final race of the season. With all available runners answering the call to arms we fielded the strongest team we could muster and hoped it would be enough to save us. The outcome was a real nail-biter, but our best finish of the season (10th position out of 16 teams) meant that we did enough to move out of the relegation places (just), and with 3 teams to go down rather than the expected 4 we survived by a tiny 24 point margin in a season's total of 2485 - so that famous 1% extra effort over the season was the deciding factor and we remain in the top division for next season. Well done lads! And big thanks to Richard and Ashley for helping with duties at the finish.
A team: Dan Robinson 39, Martin Matthews 76, Steve Dunsby 84, Mark Ince 90, Nick Lewis 99, Tom Powell 108 = total 496
The B team also had their best result of the season finishing a brilliant 7th to close the season in 8th place. This demonstrated our strength in depth, which in fact was our key weapon over the whole season - having lost 2 of last season's top runners before the season started and others to injury half way through the season, we still managed to field strong teams.
B team: Jon Lundy 115, Thanos Tsolakis 130, Nathan Warren 141, Abayomi Adedimeji 145, Adam Western 173, Ben Beaumont 174 = total 878
Chasing hard: Toby Close 176, Iain Squires 180, Chris Burrows 183, Andy Kenchington 186, Huw Jones 196, Raggy Gray 199, Nathan Smith 212, Will Raiment 214, Chris Grimley 216, Frank Inman 224, Kevin Oakes 226, Chris Woods 235, Rob Dowse 238, Andy Piddington 242, Paul Cannon 245, Rob Rose 274, David Sansom 292. Damian Cartland sadly had to pull out injured mid race; there were 300 finishers.
Full results and tables are at www.birminghamccleague.co.uk
So huge thanks to all who turned out at Wolverhampton and over the course of the season to run, to volunteer or to support; it's been memorable in so many ways – highs and lows, battling through adversity, BRATs galore , mud everywhere, and amazing unwavering team spirit. Thank you all!
Martin Ludford