NESS XC; Final cross country round-up

23 February 2023 - By Ben O'leary

Wow what a season, your captains couldn’t be prouder. WRC were out in strength this season with over 30 runners even on our lowest turnout, and well over our bodyweights in cake demolished.

As our beautiful Fixtures sec announced earlier in the week, we came a solid 4th place overall this year. We were 1 point behind the Great Bentley Tortoises coming into the final race but we didn’t quite manage to beat them, leaving us 2 points behind overall.

We were, however, well clear of 5th place and presumably will be losing Mid Essex Casuals from pool A and replacing them with Springfield (who won Pool B) for next year. Springfield were on great form and may shake things up next year. We’ll have our work cut out for us so keep up the trail running over the summer!

A special shout out to all these wonderful people who ran all 5 NESS events in black and gold this season:

Name	Total points
Heydon Mizon	31
Liz Stuckey	166
Matt Rees	175
Mark Austin	411
Jack Welch	438
Steven Alder	759
Adam Hocken	759

A shout also goes to:

• James “Monty” Montgomery for also running in all events, and sensibly opting to drop out from a couple due to  injury
• Jodee Mayer for running 4 events and then volunteering to score for the final one
• Liz Prior for attending all 5 events and running 3 of them (and is an amazing captain…)

Heydon is our individual club winner (even when he gets lost on the course and falls over) but you may also recall that last year Heydon even came second place individual man overall. This is an award only open to runners who participate in all 5 events. I bet you’ve all been wondering whether he could pull off such a feat again? Well he can’t…

…He only went and came first this year!!! Check this record out:

			Race 1	Race 2	Race 3	Race 4	Race 5	Total
Heydon Mizon	V45	Witham	5	8	6	2	10	31
Aden  Bell	OPEN	Hadleigh	8	6	10	5	11	40
Callum Milner	OPEN	CATS	11	9	11	13	16	60

Edging out those young upstarts in the open category to claim a solid 9-point lead and take home the trophy (hopefully there is a real trophy… we’ll be in touch I assume).

Our next in the individuals lists were Matt Rees in 8th place for men and Liz Stuckey in 6th place for the ladies. It may also interest you that even though Colchester won pool A, they didn’t have any individuals in the top 10. Not enough dedication.

Our best performers from any single race was a 1st place from Peter Coates and a 4th place from Emelye Dwyer, both in the first event at Hilly Fields.

The intra-club competition

So we knew from the fourth race that the Warthogs couldn’t be beaten, their lead was unassailable. I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating them for all their hard work!

The rest of the table is a completely different story, here’s how it all stacks up:

The Warthogs fell from grace, and the Weasels gave it their all. Here’s the cumulative scores to show how things changed from race 4 to race 5:

So the final race saw the outstanding performance from the Weasels catch them up with the Woodpeckers who were hit hard by no-shows at the final race. A great second place finish from the Wallabies means they pulled back into second after all.

Sport is the winner this week (and, of course, the Warthogs).

For any stats fans, here’s the full set of numbers from my spreadsheet. If this isn’t you I’d recommend you stop reading here and go get a drink to start warming up for Saturday (alcohol optional).