A huge thank you to the 89 Springfield Striders that ran yesterday.
It's a great achievement to have you all competing in the yellow and white, especially the newer members for which this was their first competitive event.
I hope you all felt the team spirit that our club enjoys while participating in these events.

Myself and Julian were with the event right from start to finish, and witnessed some fine performances from everyone from the 1st team down to the last. So please pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.

Unfortunately  we could only manage runners up positions in all three of the competitions. The Open Men’s event was close on the 1st Leg with a fine sprint finish between Paul Dobson and Colchesters Allen Smalls. From then on Colchester tightened their grip on the title with some consistent top 3 finishes. Although our men continued to fight for the overall result, we couldn't quite match them.

The Ladies started off with some excellent results with 1st positions in the early legs for Sarah Colbert, June Allen, Nikki Brockbank and Tracy Alexandrou. All was looking good for the Ladies winning the team event until the later stages when Benfleet's ladies appeared to turn up and post some excellent results. We thought it would be close in the end but the ladies did indeed lose out to Benfleet.

Finally, the Vets team spent all day posting some excellent results, with no apparent weak legs. I was quietly confident that the Vets were in a commanding position, but without knowing the running results we weren’t aware of a sneaky Grange Farm vets team that were quietly doing their thing throughout the day. Ultimately we finished as runners up, which is still a fine acheivement for the over 45's of the club.

All in all, a great day with a great atmosphere and some great performances. Well done and thanks again. Results

Anthony.