English XC, Alton Towers – 19.02.11

Mud, mud and more mud! By the time our boys were ready to run the organizers had to abandon part of the 3k course on health and safety grounds and the race was changed to a 2k x 1.5k.

As it was, some of the marshals hadn’t been notified of the changes and this then resulted in the race being unintentionally raced too short…… some runners looking around bewildered as to why they had only done 1k and not 2k; others only too happy to have only run 1k under these extremely slippery conditions.

For Horwich RMI our well traveled U13 boys team was unfortunately unable to claim a team position due to Jonathan Powis having being sick just days before. Nevertheless on the hills of Staffordshire in cold conditions our lads went off. Nathan Townsend home in 135^th, Cameron Critchley having the race of his season in 168^th and Will Townsend home in 224^th.

The race was well over 300 strong so well done to the lads.

A mention for Gary Priestley who seemed to be our only senior runner today. Gary did extremely well under the conditions and came home in a respectable 220^th out of 1302 runners.