Review of Our Harrier League Season
This review describes all the highs and lows on our way to unrivialed victory in this season's Harrier League:
So...it all started off back in November 2002 at the Riverside, Chester le Street. The flat, fast course kinda worms it's way through wasteland (which is why I got lost...!) and then back up the riverbank to the finish. We got off to an average start, finishing as third team with Tynedale and Gosforth ahead of us. Counters Being:
4th - Andrew Lawrence (Slow Pack)
15th - John Travis (Slow Pack)
16th - Gareth Driscoll (Fast Pack)
Gareth picked up our fastest time.
So off we went to Faringdon, Sunderland towards the end of November where the high was we finished as 1st team and low was I lost me spikes in the river and had to fish 'em out. Ending up finishing well down :-( So our counters were:
3rd - Joe Wood (Slow Pack)
6th - Sean Kirtley (Fast Pack)
14th - Andrew Lawrence (complete with a soakin pair of Spikes)
Chris Finished in 21st place from the fast pack. Joe picked up our fastest time of the day finishing in an excellent 3rd.
There I was, still in the slow pack, disqualified in the first race, lost me spikes in the 2nd race. But we still had good placings as a team in the previous 2 races so things were lookin good going into the 3rd race at Meadowfield, Durham! Actually, Durham turned out to be our best race so far:
1st - Andrew Lawrence (Slow Pack)
3rd - John Travis (Slow Pack)
15th - Sean Kirtley (Fast Pack)
26th - Chris Aynsley (Fast Pack)
The fast sloping finish tended to suit us all and there was just one steep incline and a gentle gradient up to the top of the course, so the course was kanny good, and Andrew picked up the fastest time of the day from the slow pack with 50 secs on the 2nd placed finisher.
Travis had a class run coming in 3rd just beating Gosforth's Lew Timmins confirming a Morpeth 1, 3. Now that is dominance. Support for the team came from Sean Kirtley finishing in 15th from the fast pack, giving us a massive 24 point win over Gosforth!
Into
the fourth race we went then, with Joe, Sean and Chris running in
this one. Only 3 of us out of the 6 which usually take part, but
even
so,
we still won with placings of:
5th - Sean Kirtley (Fast Pack)
6th - Joe Wood (Fast Pack)
12th - Chris Aynsley (Fast Pack)
This was a particulary good result because Joe and Chris had run at the Inter Counties for Northumberland the day before on the Saturday. In this race we finished one point infront of our rivals from Gosforth!
So into March and up crept the penultimate race of the harrier League season. Sean had a point to prove because he was still in with a shout of 3rd place in the overall leaders standings of the season, so Consett was a must win for the team. On a boiling hot, clear day (click here for pictures) we finished as 1st team again with an 11 point victory over Birtley. The Results:
1st - Kurt Heron (Slow Pack!)
4th - Andrew Lawrence (Fast Pack)
5th - Sean Kirtley (Fast Pack)
Chris came in 9th with a strong run while Travis came in 14th with another excellent performace. This was Kurt's first Harrier League and as it was so far into the season he had the whole slow pack to himself at the beginning, that was a laff. "Quick he's catchin' you," we shouted at the start. He still got our fastest time.
And so into the last Harrier League race of the season (and also the last XC race too!) we ventured. Sean was pretty much guarnteed his 3rd place overall and our team the 1st place but we still wanted to race the best we could.
Chris decided not to race here, now we know why...This has gotta be one of the hardest, toughest courses anywhere. After a nice start and middle bit you run down the grasslands above Prudhoe and then when you reach the bottom - yep you've guessed it - you've got a long slog back up, and when we say "back up" we mean "vertially back up" (well almost...)
We had individual race winner, team win, and season win at the end of it all. Below are our results:
1st - Andrew Lawrence
4th - Sean Kirtley
5th - Gareth Driscoll
11th - Jon Travis
Our team victory was confirmed by 12 points, on what was a boiling hot day with little wind - little surprise alot of runners had to pull up with cramp and tired legs.
So that was it. 6 Races/5 Team wins, 3 individual winners, 2 third placings. So overall our last ever junior season in the harrier league was a complete success, so bring on the seniors we say, and we will find out how we compete with them - mind you if George from Heaton is still running Kurt is definately gonna have to get some hard training in. Infact. They could even be training partners...
