The 54th Boys and 46th Girls ESAA English Schools' Cross Country Championship took place at Castle Donington on Saturday 15th March 2014 and 14 of the KTH middle distance squad were in action on a dry but very windy and exposed location which as a result of the recent dry weather has dried out considerable to leave the course soft but extremely uneven.
The Inter girls were the first in action over the 3.5km course and with the first km over a slightly downhill section of the course a fast start was the order of the day. Claudia Nevett experiencing English schools for the first time ran an solid race to finish 3rd Northants scorer in 188th position in 14:59 from a field of 336 athletes, finding the course a little too short for her liking she finished strongly taking places right through to the finish, Gemma Vaughan suffering from a slow start found the going hard making up places and finished in 309th position (16:11), Northants Team were 34th county.
Junior Boys with Jake Trent representing KTH were off next over the same distance, with Jake running well for 206th position (16:19) out of a field of 333 and helping Northants to the highest team position of the day in 17th position.
In the Junior Girls race over 3km, Rebecca Hughes was the sole club representation and she ran well to finish just behind former Harrier Tabatha Walford in 275th in 12:11, helping Northants finish in lowly 41stposition, there were 343 runners competing.
Inter Boys were next off with Josh Cara running an excellent race and again top achieving the top position within the squad with an excellent 45th over the 5.7km course running in the unfamiliar colours of Warwickshire (39th county), with Jack Hope running well with a solid top 100 position in 87th and second Northants scorer, helping the county to 31st position. Edward cannel ran well after a cautious start to finish in 241st (5th Northants scorer) with Ethan Mehmet fishing in 314th out of a field of 326.
In the Senior women’s race over 4.3km, both Jess Gordon and Fran Ashworth made excellent use of the pen position to find themselves in the top 20 after the first 500m with an excellent start, Jess battled well to maintain position and had perhaps her best ever race ever over the country to finish in a superb 57thposition (in 16:49) out of a field of 321 athletes, Claudia Kelsall who prefers a longer distance got a little caught up in the start but also ran well to finish in 115th ( 17:35 & 2nd Northants) and Fran Ashworth running well for 219th (18:44) and 5th Northants scorer helping them to a credible 30th position. Abigail Coleman competing for Leicestershire finished in a respectable 186th (18:24) and 5th scorer for the team helping them to an excellent 11th position.
Final race of the day saw the Hayes twins in action over the 6.9km course with Lewis running enjoying a solid final race to finish 2nd Northants scorer in 204th position with 27:29, again defeating former Harrier Josh Coles (215th), with twin Jed running well for 294th (29:33) & 5th Northants scorer helping them to 37th team position. There were 314 athletes running.
Well Done to all the athletes who competed.
After a long hard Cross Country season, all the squad now have a well-earned 2 week rest from training in preparation for the forthcoming tack season, and most will hopefully show they have wintered well and benefit from hard work put in over the XC season.