• Press Report 8th December 2008

     
    Some beautiful winter sunshine greeted athletes at the Essex veterans championships held in the grounds of the old Claybury hospital at Woodford on Saturday afternoon.
    The first race of the day went off at noon comprising a combined field of the over 50 men and veteran women. The clear favourite was Mike Bridgeland of Chelmsford who quickly set about his task of opening up a commanding lead. Ilford's Andy Catton gamely held on to the chasing bunch until well into the 2nd of the 3 demanding laps. Slightly further back James O'Brien and Steve Parker were going well lending good support with Bob McStocker and John Mackenzie having their own private duel. Catton was extremely happy to hold on to 7th place as Bridgeland powered through to win by over 1 and a half minutes. O'Brien 31st, Parker 39th and Mcstocker 44th closed the squad to 6th place in the team competition with Mackenzie just being pipped for the last scoring position back in 45th. Graham Williams 68th and Robin Davis 73rd completed the Ilford squad.
    In the women's race Bree Nordin was the 1st woman home for Ilford in 16th place ahead of Dianne Crisp who came through the field strongly with an excellent placing of 24th just ahead of Mel Jones in 25th. Victoria Morgan in 38th completed the womens scorers as the Cricklefields club placed 5th out of 10 closing teams. Pam Jones 44th and Carol Muir 62nd supported well.
    The over 40's race went off soon after with Iford's main hope being former winner Iain Campbell. Campbell out for most of the year with a hamstring injury and short of race competition naturally started cautiously letting Paul Dobson of Springfield, Matt Bland of Havering and Gary Chandler also of Springfield lead the charge with Colchester's Paul Spowage also in the group. However by the end of lap 2 the Ilford man had worked his way through to 6th ahead of Woodford's Richard Holland and just failed to catch Colchesters Alan Smalls after closing him down in the last lap. Not far behind Neil Crisp was working extremely hard and spurred on by some great support on the course moved up 5 places into the top 20 eventually finishing in an excellent 19th. Abdi Berleen was third scorer home in 42nd and Henry Ricketts completed the scoring quartet to place Ilford 7th out of 11 closing teams.