National XC Championships Wollaton Park Nottingham
Winchester & District Athletic Club runners travelled north to the picturesque setting of Wollaton Park Nottingham for the English National Cross Country Championships. The course is undulating with parts of the course testing and muddy but with some other parts of faster grassland especially the very wide start area. For the runners there were a couple of nasty muddy ditches to navigate through. The weather was traditionally cross country style being wet and blowy.
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nWADAC main hopes of success were with the Senior Women team with a team medal a real possibility. The ladies had to cover a distance of 8 kilometre made up of two big laps. Marathoner Louise Damen started steadily but quickly picked her way through the field but was never quite able to get to the leaders but had a fantastic run to finish in 6th place in 29.56 behind winner Jessica Judd of Chelmsford. This inspired her team-mates to run hard and Hayley Munn finished strongly in 36th 31.45. The third scorer for WADAC was Melanie Wilkins in 51st 32.14 with the team completed by Simone Dailey 32.42 in a fine 67th with Super vet Lucy Elliott just behind her in 69th. The team were agonisingly only 6 points from bronze medals but still 4th team in the country is a very fine result. In a field of 788 finishers the others WADAC runners were Jennifer McLachlan 127th and Jill Goodwin 761st.
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nIn the 10km U20 Junior Men race James Heneghan ran very well in finishing 43rd 35.25 with Calum Upton making the top 100 in 94th position 36.57 and also Humza Ahmed in 133rd 38.21. Calum’s sister Rosie was 139th in the Under 20 Womens race. The multi talented Tallulah Jeffes decided to try her hand at Cross Country and ran well in the Under 15 girls for 209th position. In the Under 17 women category WADAC have been having some consistently good performances this season and to carry this on were Emily Coulson 83rd 21.56 and Poppy Clements 99th 22.12 .
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nIn the 2000 strong Senior Men 12km race WADAC senior men finishers were Tim Swales 553rd Dan Cunnington 555th Sam Appleton 808th and Andy Parkinson 905th.