Saturday 15th October 2022

Report by Dot Kesterton

The first East Midlands Cross Country league race of the year at Markeaton Park, Derby on Saturday 15th October 2022 was host to the English Masters selection meeting for a Home International to be held in Dublin next month.

I’d wanted to qualify to race it in 2020, deferred because of you-know-what til 2021 and deferred again until this year. Finally then, along with fellow Strider Fiona Jeffries we donned our spikes, unworn for quite some time and lined up with a host of Senior women and M65+ men for our race at around 13:50 in wonderful early autumn sunshine, having spent and enjoyable hour watching the young East Midland athletes complete their races first.

The 6.1km course is undulating with a couple of switchbacks almost all on grass with just an occasional tarmac path crossing. Having done much of our training and preparation on the steeper slopes of Norfolk Park the Markeaton Park race felt comfortable though a couple of narrow sections meant the pace had to vary with the terrain.

Fiona, completed in a commendable 27:48 minutes, 6th W50. At the top end of her age group, Fiona ran very competitively and would have qualified for Dublin in her next age group but narrowly missed the W50 selection. I chased former Olympic marathon runner, Yuko Gordon to the funnel, just 6 seconds separating us, in 31:36 minutes, 2nd W70 to qualify to run for England in Dublin. Sadly after looking forward to the championship for the last two years I’ll be unable to take it up after irritating a knee joint which will keep me on the bench for a few weeks. Never mind, there’s always next year’s selections to look forward to.

The M65 and upwards /All Females race was won by Juliet Potter (Midlands Masters W40) in 23:20.  First man was Kevin Newman (Northern Masters M65) in 25:50.  Two Striders ran the 6.1k course