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A great turn out for one of the tougher races on our calendar. The recent rain had softened the course and made things a little slippy, while the bright sunshine was a welcome relief from said rain.

Updated 2115 hours to add missing runners!

A stunning morning on one of the more fun courses… and the race was won by a man in fancy dress, some 2 minutes ahead of the 2nd place finisher.

Based on the provisional results, both teams performed well: Alex’s 25 miles the day before took the edge off his legs, but he led the team home (despite what it says in the table below!), with excellent packing from Rob Foster, Phil Jones, Paul Mason and Adrian Sell. Lucy Buckby was first lady home in an excellent 7th place, “chicking” over half the men in the club, with Clara and Sarah Lester packing nicely to complete the team in 15th and 18th place.

The men’s team finished 2nd and the ladies 5th. Overall, we finished 3rd, a scant 13 points behind 2nd placed Reading Roadrunners.

Full results are here

The urge to get cold, wet and muddy continues with a Dashers outing to The Grim Challenge. Looking at the photos I think they’d have actually got muddier at Black Park parkrun!

Six Dashers chose the extreme cross country option on Sunday, attending Hell Down South. Leading the way home was Jenny Guy, finishing an excellent 42nd lady home, whilst Mike May was 7th MV60. Unfortunately the results currently show Nina going missing on the course - I know the mud and water can be deep, but surely not that deep. She assures me she finished however, as did Claudia McKenzie who’s missing from the results completely. I’ll update this as soon as we have the final results

Wow! A first for the club: not only did we win the men’s team competition and come second in the ladies team competition, but we also won the fixture OUTRIGHT! Well done to everyone who ran – not just those who made up the winning teams, but to each and every person who turned out and showed why this is such a great club.

For the men, Alex Miller scored his maiden XC win, but it was our team packing that really did the damage – our first 6 came home inside the top 17. There was a real sense of “team running” at the front.

Lucy Buckby was first lady home for the club in an excellent 5th position, with Nicky Way and Clara Trant completing the team in 8th and 10th place respectively.

The event was definitely not “all about the win” though  – with an impressive 40 runners turning out for a cross-country, it was one of the club’s best XC turnouts for a long while. Even the notorious Sandhurst weather played ball and gave us sunny, if blustery, conditions.

The next event is the Handy Cross XC on Sunday 11th December at 11am.

Nneka Okonta ran the rearranged third round of this event, finishing in 48:38 for 90th position & 6th senior lady

A successful evening at the Woodland 5 for The Dashers, coming away with 2nd & 3rd senior lady prizes for Lucy Buckby & Clara Trant, plus 3rd male vet for Jonathan Davies. We also made up 20% of the field on the night.

Neil Potter ran the stunningly scenic but also very hilly North Downs 30km, having an excellent run and coming home in 52nd place in 2:33:33 -  a full 15 minutes faster than last year.

The inaugural running of this off-road race saw about 500 people run a combination of the hilly 5k and 10k that were on offer. Chris Bradfield continued his tentative return with a distant 2nd place in a time somewhere of 39:48. The course and the bacon butty afterwards were both very enjoyable!

Andy Cooney headed up to Yorkshire for the 57th annual 3 Peaks Race - 23.3 miles up hill and down dale, with over 5000 feet of ascent. Andrew finished 289th in a time of 4:20:13.

After the cancellation of the Cliveden XC at Christmas, Burnham Joggers arranged an alternative race at Black Park:

A small select band of Dashers attended this round of the cross country league, with the ladies outdoing the men for only the second time this season, finishing 5th to the men’s 7th. Overall the team finished 7th to retain our 5th place in the league, but we are now only 4 points ahead of Sheen Shufflers and 6 ahead of Burnham Joggers, so we still need you to turn out for the two remaining rounds.

Paul Woolley ran this tough 12k off-road race, and finished in an excellent 19th position in a time of 52:30

A small turnout of Dashers at the Reading Road Runners cross country at Bearwood College, but a good performance by those who attended gave the team 5th place on the day, a result that leaves us 5th in the league at the halfway point. It was nice to see Chris Bradfield back on the country again after so long out with injury, with a very commendable 40th place on the back of practically no running for 2 years.