The “you’re not allowed to mention Christmas yet” weekend report.

Yes, its mid-way through November-ish which means that the XC season is well on the way to being foremost in a lot of peoples race calendars. This was even more the case this week as the Heaton Park fixture was one of the final races of the GDH club champs.

The Ladies result wasn’t really in any doubt as Kirsty “the machine” Johnson continued her good running in the XC champs, carving a beautiful line through the mud, coming in 3rd overall. Slightly further down the field, Jo Brack fought through the puddles and mud to be 2nd GDH female in the results.

The Gents race was a little more closely fought. To be honest, I’m not sure how close the battling was, but for the sake of a little artistic licence, lets say there was an epic battle throughout the Glossopdale ranks. The Heaton Park Skirmish marked the second fixture in the season long war developing between “age and experience” Steve Crossman and “youth and strength” Chris Jackson, and it played out in spectacular style. Chris took the fight to Steve and held on gamely over the 3 laps, but Steve’s recent physical and mental training shone through and he secured a glorious victory over the young pretender. We look forward to more monumental clashes between these behemoths of racing over the next few months, some, if not all, will be totally made up on the spot by yours truely.

Matt Crompton had a superb return to form from injury, being 3rd GDH in despite warming his legs up with the Parkrun earlier in the day He was followed by Lawrence on his XC debut who managed to hold onto his position, despite being chased down by John Stephenson across all 3 muddy laps. Each and every one of them certainly earned their hard fought for points in the Club Champs.

In the Juniors, Esme Brack had a superb run coming in 2nd in the U17 ladies, and Wyatt Barlow raced his debut XC, mostly enjoying the part where his shoes nearly got sucked off in the mud. (That’s a budding Fellrunner if ever I heard one!)

The results looked a bit like this:

Ladies:
3rd-  Kirsty Johnson
57th – Jo Brack

Blokes:
15th Steve Crossman
21st Chris Jackson
85th Matt Crompton
128th Lawrence Fennelly
156th John Stephenson

On the slightly firmer stuff (both in terms of running surface and reliability of results), Dave Jowitt ran the Conwy Half on Sunday, enjoying much better, and slightly warmer weather than those of us in Glossop. He ran a fine race to cut the tape at 1:44

Paul Drury was over at Tatton Park doing the Run Tatton 10k. Unfortunately the website is down, so I have no idea how he did. Lets call it 56mins and see if my guess is anywhere near close. (Ok, I cheated, I looked at Strava).

There were 2 Glossopdalers on the entry list for the Full Tour of Pendle this weekend. Pendle was covered in snow, so the already generally pretty epic race was given a further twist, not only in getting there, but also running up and down the same hill a load of times (in different places of course) without sliding all the way down and taking other runners out. From his Strava profile, I’d guess that Jamie H didn’t get there – but as for Mark O… until the results come out, who knows? (yes, I have asked him, but as yet don’t have an answer).

Update: – no-one from our lot ended up going.

However, there were 2 intrepid souls at the Preston 10 on Sunday. Serial roadie-ite Andy Burnett was joined by David Chrystie-Lowe and together they tore up the course. David’s recent successes in the GDH thursday night 10k timetrial evidently gave him wings, and he bagged a 10mile PB with 1:11:20, coming in 111th. Andy feels he has more work to do, battling in at 1:17:36 in 203rd place, so we look forward to a continuing upward curve. There were 413 runners altogether, so a damn good show by the 2 Blue and Oranges that trailed their way up north.

In other news, Glossop Parkrun continued without incident – Results here, and the wider Glossopdale Parkrun consolidate reportage is here

Beyond that, I don’t really know what anyone else has been up to. There were a fair amount of people bashing around on the tops, which is great to see, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few more sneaky results that I haven’t seen which are lurking around in the background as well. If you know about them, let me know, else I’ll just make it up.