Race Date: Saturday 13th December 2025
Sarah Thorne explains why she isn’t running the Yorkshire Champs next month.
Once upon a time, over the Pennines and far away… well, not that long ago, and not that far away, but anyway… there was a park. It was just an average park. Not especially big, not particularly small. Just a standard park. Mostly grass, a few trees, maybe Lindens? I really should know but I don’t!. (Editor: The house and park date back over 600 years and is full of specimen trees. Please refer to this Tree Trail). Picture any park you’ve ever been to and you’re probably not far off. Even better, if you’ve ever done Burnley Parkrun, picture the course. That’s the exact park of our tale….
Sarah does Towneley Park an injustice for, as well as the surrounding parkland, Towneley Hall has a fine museum and art gallery.
For unknown reasons, Towneley park is beloved for cross country courses. I have galloped round its fields as a child and been dragged round them as a teenager. I thought the days of battling the wind funnelling through the valley were long gone but then it was announced that this year’s Lancashire XC Championship was coming to Burnley and so it was back to running around Townley’s muddy fields for me.
Normally these take place in January, so these were technically the 2026 championships billed as the 2025/26 Championships, not to be confused with the 2025 championships in Witton Park, Blackburn that happened in January. My race number suggested I was still in Witton Park, but fortunately it didn’t have a year printed on to cause maximum confusion.
If I hadn’t run variations of the course so many times before, and especially if the last time I did cross country at Townley hadn’t been with extreme reluctance at secondary school, I probably would’ve enjoyed it a lot more. The course is almost flat, but there was a little mud on offer, and the route weaves around a few different fields which at least offers a varied view.
The real lure was to try and get a Lancashire vest for the Inter-Counties, which, having finished outside the top six, I won’t find out about for a couple of months. Still, I don’t tend to do well on flat courses and had low expectations, but I somehow managed to finish eighth, two places higher than in January (probably a couple of people couldn’t make the December fixture), which I’m super pleased about.
The women’s race over 6.3km was won by Bethany Reid (Trafford AC) and the men’s by Luke Minns (Blackpool Wyre & Flyde AC). Full results Lancashire Cross Country Championships 2025/2026
| Pos | Name | Cat | Time |
| 9 (8) | Sarah Thorne | SF | 27:36 |