Firstly a mention for Craig Mitchell for running the Mercury 10 trail race, hosted by Orion Harriers last weekend near Loughton. This was the 101st time this race has taken place and it is described as a tough ten mile cross country race through Epping Forest. There was also plenty of parkrun action last Saturday, including the Cottons and Harris’ taking part in Krakow parkrun in Poland. Results for the 13th can be found here.

Fast forward to this week:

On Wednesday, Scott Young and Phil Presland took part in the Essex Trail Event Dark Hart trail run which took place in Stebbing – they were 9th and 10th around the 5 mile route. The promise of a drink in the pub afterwards was a good incentive!

On Saturday many of you ventured out for parkrun, braving the cold morning. There were tourist visits by Laura Cook, Donna Harris and Mark Harris to East Grinstead, whilst Bee Harris stopped off at Northampton parkrun on her way to the National Running Show. Colchester Castle parkrun also made a return with a revised route which now see you running those hills by the castle 4 times! This week’s results can be found here. On Sunday, Xander Briggs ran his 32nd junior parkrun.

Meanwhile on Sunday, many Bentley Blues ventured down to South Essex and the delights of Hadleigh Country Park and the Benfleet 15. Known for its gruelling hill in the last mile, it didn’t put lots of you off getting great times. There were fourteen runners with Josh Beaumont the first Bentley runner home, 17th place in 1:44:20 followed by Jon Mann in 1:53:16; Richard Heath 2:02:41; Paul Brazier 2:06:24; Craig Mitchell 2:07:54; Gethin Hughes 2:08:58; Gerry Gladden 2:09:28; Adam Robey 2:21:13; Tricia Stacey 2:30:53; Toni Wilson 2:48:29; Vicki Law 2:59:47; Catherine Ott 3:33:10; Emma Wright 3:33:11 and Dave Jones 3:33:14.

Sunday also saw the fourth Ness cross country race of the season, at Wix, hosted by Harwich Runners. There was talk of freshly ploughed fields, clay mud and ditches, but I won’t ponder too long on those as I believe the memories are still too fresh in the minds of those who took part, rather like the Benfleet hills! The ladies team ran really well and came 2nd, whilst the men came 5th. We go into the last race of the season needing as many people out there to keep us up in Pool A.

I finish this race report with a request for those of you thinking of a way to get more involved with the club to consider joining the race reporting team. It involves looking at results posted on Facebook and the parkrun website, along with a small amount of investigating of what people have been up to as well. We work on a rota basis so you would only be required to write a report every few weeks. Please let us know if you are interested.