Worksop Harriers ladies miss out on title

The Worksop Harriers team at Manton Pit Top

The English National XC took place at its original home in London on Parliament Hill which saw some of the best athletes in the country compete across all age categories on a notoriously tough set of courses.

Worksop didn’t send a full team down this year but they did have a single representative in the U13 girls as Martha Hazlehurst took part.

It was a single lap for her race of nearly 2 miles, climbing a tough 200+ ft over such a short distance with the whole climb right from the start. Martha finished 234rd in a time of 15:40 from close to 600 U13 girls.

On to Sunday and it was time for the finale of the 2022 Local XC series on Manton Pit To.

Clear blue skies made for very nice racing conditions but the 5.5 mile/500+ ft course was still very wet underfoot in places thanks to recent storms and with the Harriers ladies in contention for the overall team win there was much to race for.

The Harriers fielded perhaps their strongest team date, led home by Sarah Worley (3rd) in 40:20.5 and continued to pack the top-10 with a trio of Charlotte Jones, Sally Ormrod and Amy Ogden in 5th, 6th and 7th.

The scoring-7 was rounded out by Kim Widdop (15th), Sam Marriott (21st) and Tanja Maric (23rd) and combined with a full size squad (Cath Mhembere, Rachel Silcock, Nat Cunningham, Sally Bulmer, Nia Arthur, Gemma Hind, Cassie Worton, Kerry Dickinson, Carolyn Luckham and Tammy Dickinson) saw the ladies team with one of the best scores of the series so far with just 70 points and a match win.

It really was a local battle though and couldn’t have been any closer as Retford remained in competition to see a first in the series of a draw for joint 1st - not only on the match, but on the series overall which saw them grab the ladies title on points difference.

On the men’s front a furious start saw a hard battle forming right from the off as the initial six leaders came down to a trio between Thomas Shaw (Worksop), Ben Harris (Retford) and Lewis Banton (Clowne). Tom made a hard attack straight from the top of the climb and back downhill to the finish to finally put daylight between the trio to make it three wins from five for the Harriers.