Essex Cross Country League ….Round 2
Hockley Sat 31st October 2015

Runners from Ilford AC and representing a variety of age groups contested the 2nd round of the Essex Cross country League held at Hockley Woods in extremely pleasant autumnal running conditions last Saturday over the usual challenging and varied course comprising some steep climbs open fields and a wooded section.

Once again many of the Club’s younger members shined in the junior races. For the first time in many years Ilford had 6 U13 Boys competing. First home was Farris Patel in 12th place , quickly followed by Arun Manget in 13th. Both these athletes were challenging at the front for a large part of the race and were not far behind at the end of achieving a top 6 finish.

Following these boys home were Matthew Hick in 23rd, Bradley Deacon in 26th, Euan Johnstone in 46th and Mehdi Harun in 47th. In the U15’s boys and Girls race, Jack Halil came 42nd in the boys race and Jordan Hinds came a respectable 26th and Isabella Hick 39th for the girls.
The best performance of the day came in the U17s where Ahmed Abdulle led the race from start to finish, winning by a large margin.
A field of 90 women took part in the senior ladies race over approximately 7km and best for Ilford AC was Krystle Balogun in 15th place with 27m 48s, while Bree Nordin finished 36th in 30m 38s and Nicola Hopkinson gave a solid performance in 48th recording 32m 43s. The trio combined to finish 12th in the team match.

The senior mens race of around 8.5km attracted over 170 starters. Leading the way for Ilford was Tom Gardner who ran an excellent race to come home in 2nd place with 30m 17s, being beaten only by Colchester’s in-form Adrian Mussett. Supporting him well were Paul Holloway in 51st in 35m 19s and Kevin Wotton with 36m 27s for 36m 27s. Neil Crisp recorded 36m 58s in 75th. They were backed up by 2 of the clubs legendary elder statesmen, Andy Catton, 95th in 39.26 and Tony Nixon 11th in 40.36 who closed the 6 man scoring team to 9th place. Also in action were Ed Skinner 148th (48m 03s).James Huddart 167th and Graham Williams 168th.

After two matches both men and women lie 10th in divison 1 of the league.

Billericay 10k
Sunday 1st November 2015

On a crisp cold foggy Sunday morning, Ilford AC legend, Terry Knightley, was the sole representative from the club in the annual Billericay Striders 10K Road Race.

Back in 1998 he won the race outright. However this year in a field of around 600 runners, Knightley managed to finish in 30th place in 39 minutes and 20 seconds to win the First Veteran Over 50 Prize for the Fourth time in the last Six years !

The race was won by Paul Whittaker of Southend AC In a course record of 30 minutes and 31 seconds.

Dublin Marathon

Ilford’s Declan Cullen travelled to Dublin to take part in their marathon held on the late October bank holiday Monday. Despite suffering a few injury problems in his build up Declan ran a well controlled race, running the first half in exactly the same time as the second to record a finishing time of 3hrs 38 mins 07 secs,a new personal best time by 4 minutes and placing him 3806th in a large field of almost 13000 and 18th in the M60 age category.