There was some cracking racing in the Chichester 10km road race from Goodwood on Sunday morning.
Conditions were cool but excellent for road racing with a fine battle at the head of the field and the first seven runners finishing the race inside thirty minutes.
Sussex runners Paul Navesey (Crawley) and the little Sussex known road runner Calum Johnson (Bodyworks) were in company with County cross-country champion Tom Evans from Lewes for much of the race but as the field stretched the Crawley runner was paired off with Enfield’s William Mycroft and in the final dash for the winning line it was the Enfield runner who snatched victory by just one second in 29:32 with Andy Ward (Clapham Chasers) doing the same to Johnson in 29.37 for the bronze medal.
Evans placed sixth in 29:44 while local runner Harry Leleu finished 12th in 30:51 followed by Crawley’s Neil Boniface, the first M40 athlete to finish in 15th place and Brighton & Hove’s County M40 Cross-country champion, finishing 18th in 31:13 and 31:19 respectively.
These times underlined the fastness of this course and the conditions.
In the women’s race, that was held in conjunction, Aldershot’s Stephen Twell was the first woman to finish placing 41st overall in 33:17. Club mate Lauren Hall was the second woman to finish placing 55th in 34:01 with Leah Harris (Worthing) placing 71st in 34:55 for the bronze medal while Bodywork’s Chloe Cook, who is primarily a triathlete, took fourth place in 35:09.
For the second successive week veteran Caroline Hoyte (Arena 80) was beaten by club mate Maisie Trafford. Trafford finished 97th in 35:41 to Hoyte (W45) who placed 101st in 35:47s.
In the Sussex championship event that was held in conjunction the medal medals were Navesey, Johnson, and Evans in the men’s race with Crawley winning taking the team title while Harris, Cook and Trafford took the individual medals in the women’s event with Arena 80 taking the team event.
BUCS
There appear few Sussex runners who made the trip to Exeter for the British University’s Cross-country championships.
I could only find a couple of women who achieved top 100 placings. Brighton Phoenix’s Tara Bage, running for UCL had an excellent run to finish in 36th place while Alice Wright from Chichester who was running for Chichester Uni placed 73rd.
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