Gwent League

Newport Harriers Gwent League

Gwent League Cross-Country
Blaise Castle, Bristol, 6th December 2008

Senior Men (293 starters) – Pearce on upward learning curve

For the second race running Newport were one short of a full scoring team following injury to Neil Hardee and withdrawal after one lap by Dave Griffiths due to illness.

Pick of our senior men was Stuart Pearce. This is Stuart’s first season in Gwent League and he is learning fast. He paced himself sensibly over the heavy-going course and had something left at the end for some high knee lift and a fast finish to hold 191st place. Behind Stuart was Malcolm Medhurst (196th), delivering an excellent performance considering he worked a night shift the night before and only had two hours sleep. Dave Goodger was Newport’s highest finisher in 81st position. Dave is benefiting from an injury-free winter and this run puts him 30th overall after three fixtures. In the absence of Hardee and Griffiths, Darryn McAtee was elevated to our second best finisher in 173rd place.

University of Bath are catching us up fast and our survival in Division 1 still appears to rest on their failure to actually show up at either of the final two fixtures. On the other hand, Neath are weak this season so with our best team back out in force and their worst team struggling along they are a potential target.

After the race Assistant Team Manager Colin Bradley said, “Nice effort from the boys but frustrating that once again we only had four scorers. Now if that Gareth Fereday started running for us instead of just reading about it on the website then that would make a difference. I could have sworn I saw him training down the club last week”.

Senior Men Division 1

Senior women (153 starters) – Ann Saxena overcomes her nerves

Our trio from the previous fixture in Bath – Ann Saxena, Ceria Rice and Rhian Loudon – repeated the team effort at Blaise. Ceria gave an improved performance in 73rd place, with Rhian (104th) just outside the top 100. Ann Saxena is the most experienced cross-country runner in the club but admits she still suffers from nerves each race. She needn’t, coming 1st in the Masters over 45 category and 46th overall.

Newport slipped two places to 6th in Division 2 – comfortably mid-table and an improvement on last season’s relegation jitters.

Senior Women Division 2