On a lovely Saturday afternoon in Wythenshawe park it was great to see x-country races back with the first race in the Manchester league winter series.

In the first race for u13s, Pio Aron continued his great start to the winter season pushing Evan Grime all the way to the line finishing 2nd.  Ben Keeley had a fast finish to come through for 4^th place and with his best run for a while Evan Lewis completed the team in 10^th place.  This put Trafford in joint 1^st place but showing great  strength the 3^rd team overall was Trafford’s B team (Fin Dobson Emmas, Adrian White and Evan Horwell).

In the girls u13 race Ursula Bailey set off steady but showed she is recovering from covid and came through strong to finish 9^th overall, backed up by Sadie McCormack and Semrawit Tekle the team finished 10^th.

In the u15 race the boys team were led by another runner showing great improvements (Josh Watson).  He was backed up by Jay Hutchinson and Josh’s twin Zack who also had one of his best runs.  The team were 8^th overall as were the girls u15 team.  The girls were packed closer with Daisy Atkiss leading the team in 22nd, Isobel Thomas and Martha McCormack close behind.

In the u17 race, one of the best runs of the day came from Freya Griffiths as she moved through the field to finish 2^nd backed up by team mate Cleo Bentall in 19^th.

The u17 boys showed great strength in depth with 6 runners in the top 13 runners.  Louie McCormack has started the winter well and led the team, but hot on his heals was new boy Joe Deighton who is improving with every race.

In the senior women’s race Vicki Cronin eased into the winter season with a solid 5^th place and was backed up well by Sarah Hudak.  Possibly the run of the day was from Nicole Davenport finishing 24^th and 3^rd v40 less than 2 weeks after running the London Marathon.  Zoe Storr finished of a strong 2^nd place team and it was also great to see the B team finish 2^nd B team.  It was good to see Jo Lott return to form finishing 2^nd in the v55 age category and Sue Exon continued to run well once again finishing top 5 in the v65 age group.

In the Mens race it was newcomer Matt Cooper who has started off his running career with a bang and is one to watch as he led the team finishing 26^th overall. Alex Jones also had a strong race finishing 36^th, but with a couple of injuries causing Darren Russell and Chris Leigh to have to pull out during the race the team finished a relatively low 9^th but the team will improve as the winter progresses.