KENILWORTH Runners showed that they are the ‘masters’ of the Warwickshire County XC Championships with their Masters teams making a clean sweep of all team events in Warley Woods.
Both the men’s and lady’s teams won gold and the club’s respective B,C and D teams all claimed first positions.
Phil Gould won the individual Masters bronze, who along with Kev Hope, Stuart Hopkins and Marc Curtis brought the team trophy home for Kenilworth.
For the Ladies, Sarah Rose showed she has recovered from injury with an excellent 11th overall position and fourth Masters to lead the Masters team, with Mel Price and Laura Pettifer, to team gold.
In the senior competition, Kenilworth men’s and lady’s teams both took the bronze positions.
Stephen Page, Matthew Elkington, Paul Andrew and Matt Dyer were the men’s counters and Danielle Bryan, Laura Fuller and Betty Richardson were the lady’s counters.
However it was the strength in depth and all round team running that made it the most successful Warwickshire XC Championships ever for Kenilworth.
In addition to the senior athletes, Kenilworth Runners Youth were represented for the first time at the County Championships with a total of 15 runners taking part across the age groups.
The performance of the day came from Cameron Williams-Stein who finished with an excellent fifth place in the Under-13 boy’s race.
There were plenty of Spa Striders also in action at Saturday’s County cross-country Championship with Susie Stannard leading the ladies’ team home in a time of 24.43 to claim seventh in the masters category.
Kate Gadsby (25.12) and Clare Hinton (25.16) earned 12th and 13th masters positions and second place masters team medals were awarded to the trio.
Caroline Whitehouse (25.39), Lucy Tugwell (28.43), Helene Wright (30.59) and Lorraine Parsons (31.33) also worked hard among the competitive field.
Just four Spa Strider men raced over the longer 10km course with Dan Stannard leading the team home in 40.57 to take 107th place overall and he was chased by Simon Parsons (42.57), Dan Fleming (43.33) and Matt Leydon (51.00).
Elsewhere, Bethan Gwynn was the only Spa Strider at the Naunton ‘Nearly 19’ but teamed up with Kenilworth Runner Claire Murphy to tackle over 18 miles of Cotswold trails.
The pair were met by extremely muddy conditions which made running very hard going along a testing hilly terrain with almost 1,500ft elevation but they managed to finish in a time of 3:00.39 to claim joint sixth.
