Update for beginning of February

After a tough weekend we deserve a night out! So why come to Pub Night tomorrow Tuesday 5th to relax and congratulate ourselves on a job well done!

The Cross Country at Oswestry was tough going. Although parts of the course were drier than in some years, other parts were incredibly wet with deep muddy water. It was so wet that the course had to be re-routed as some bit were virtually un-runnable, and running them would have done a lot of damage to the field. We had full teams out in both ladies and men’s races and there were many fine performances. We picked up several individual awards; Jez was 2nd M40, Eric 3rd M45 and Les 2nd M60. Both teams held their own in the league, keeping in the middle of the top group. That is a huge success against some big clubs and teams that can turn out specialist runners for these events. The disappointment, if being second is a disappointment, was not winning the male masters. We needed to beat Eryri on the day, by a small margin only, to finish ahead. But Eryri had done their maths and dragged out some of their “big guns” and on the day won by a huge margin over everybody else (15 against our 60, Oswestry 65, Wrexham 70). Still, 2nd is brilliant. Well done and thank you everybody.

Sunday Borders League at Ty Groes was always going to interesting. We were missing several key runners through injury and other problems, not helped by being the second race in less than 24 hours. Again we had full teams out and that was really good news. Thanks to everybody especially the stalwarts who did the back-to-back races. And we fared much better than other clubs. Turnout for the event was down with only 202 runners competing (compared with 294 at Birkenhead) so our very respectable scores helped us maintain our places in the league. Well done and thanks.

It was sad that so few people decided to compete at Ty Groes because it was an amazing venue for a race. You couldn’t ask for more contrast from Saturday's running surface; 10 metre wide perfectly smooth tarmac, sweeping curves although surprisingly hilly and fantastic views back towards Snowdonia. Excellent facilities too, masses of parking space, access to the big sheds for shelter and changing, cafe and even showers. It was definitely worth the journey.

Rob