NESS XC Race 3 Results – with Intra-Club Results

15 January 2023 - By Ben O'leary

Today saw the third of our five NESS fixtures, hosted by Springfield Striders at Writtle University.

The course was muddy (shocker) and the wind made some parts of the course seem like it was fighting back, but by all accounts it was not too bad and we saw some strong performances. Attendance was down, partly because of Benfleet rudely hosting a 15 on the same day, but we still rolled out a strong field of 40 runners!

But what did we get for our trouble?

Ladies	4th
Men	3rd
Overall league position	3rd

This is an outstanding performance, we should all be proud. Just as importantly it sees us where we should be – ahead of long-time rivals Great Bentley.

Special shout-out to our gender leaders Heydon Mizon (finishing 5th) and Liz Stuckey (coming 24th), they did us all proud, but then so did all of our runners today!

If you want to see a bit more of the scoring mechanics, I’ve included a little bit at the end of the post. Don’t get too hung up on it, all you can do is show up on the day and run the conditions as well as you can, but I just know a few people will be interested to see it.

The Intra-Club

This is what you’re all really here to hear about. Can the Warthogs hold onto their lead for a third race running??

Yes they can…

We saw 25 competing runners, so 16 no-shows for this fixture which will have a big impact.

What we can see is the steady climb of the Wallabies, positioning 4th then 3rd then 2nd. Presumably we can look forward to seeing them win at race 4, but the overall rankings are so close between Wallabies, Weasels and Woodpeckers so the final outcome is still very much up in the air. It’s even possible still to beat the Warthogs, especially if they get hit by some no-shows next time around.

Here are the average points by race so you can see how close it’s getting:

Wallabies almost took it! And Woodpeckers weren’t far off edging out the Weasels.

A look at the league

It looks like 1st/2nd is a battle between Colchester Harriers and Ipswich Jaffa, while the glorious battle for 3rd and 4th is solidly between Great Bentley and the even greater Witham!

	POOL A	PTS
1	Colchester Harriers	18
2	Ipswich Jaffa	15
3	Witham	11
4	Great Bentley	10
5	Harwich	6
6	Mid Essex	3

You can see there’s a single point in it here, which means it’s still all to play for and we need to keep up our strong showings to keep on top of them. What’s more, this time around we actually tied on points!

POS	POOL A	M/F COMB	PTS
1	Colchester Harriers	3	6
2	Ipswich Jaffa	3	5
3	Great Bentley	7	4
4	Witham	7	3
5	Harwich	11	2
6	Mid Essex	11	1

But Gt. Bentley pipped us on the tie-breaker which is total finishing position for the scoring team members. They had 453 to our 459, that’s only 6 points! Between 12 scorers on each team, you can see how easily it can swing either way.

Ahead of the next race, let’s make sure we keep up the team spirit and mutual support that we all love about WRC. Let’s also see a strong showing in the cake department for extra motivation!