REPORT BY: WILL WORBOYS

SEVERAL athletes from Ilkley attended the second race in the West Yorkshire Cross Country series, in what was otherwise an unseasonably quiet weekend in the local running world.

The event took place at Thornes Park, Wakefield on Sunday morning and attracted top class runners from all age groups to take part in the various categorised races.

Ilkley’s men’s team put in another excellent performance to finish in 4th place overall in their 9.9KM race, one place better than the previous event at Guiseley earlier in the month. This was helped by Christos Tzelis putting in a brilliant run to finish 3rd in a time of 31.05, just six seconds behind Joe Sagar, the winner from Leeds City AC.

Following close behind in 4th was clubmate Ed Hobbs repeating his finishing position from last time out. The Ilkley pair were 1st and 2nd in the under 20 age category. There were also impressive performances from Dan McKeown, Stephen Gott, Stephen Coy and Danny Thompson, who’s results all contributed to the team score.

In the ladies inexplicably much shorter race of 5.5KM there were also two excellent Ilkley performances. Helena Coy, who has recently moved up to the senior ranks, showed her great potential, finishing as 2nd Under 20 and in 15th place overall. Not far behind was the only other Harrier in this race Rachel Carter, who finished 19th overall and 3rd V45W.

As for the junior races, the Under 17 men’s team were the pick, with Alexander Wolfenden (4th), Oscar Shinn (6th) and Ollie Holder (16th) helping the Harriers to 2nd overall. In the ladies Under 17 race Matilda Irvine finished 13th. While in the Under 11’s Ethan Pickwoad was 11th and Rafe Garner was 24th.

Meanwhile in North Wales, one Harrier made the trip to take part in the Marathon Eryri, which is an annual road race that circles Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales. Petra Bijsterveld had a superb run finishing in a PB time of 4:28:04 in the event.

This performance was especially strong as there is a challenging 2,674 feet of climbing in total encompassed within the scenic 26.2 miles. Petra battled issues with cramp to still knock five minutes off her best time for the race, which she had completed five times previously. The Ilkley endurance expert finished as 7th lady in the V60 category in the iconic event.

Happy news at one of this week’s 5K parkruns, where there was an emotional comeback for club stalwart Bernie Gibbons to Roberts Park. In June this year Bernie collapsed at a parkrun in Manchester and spent some time in intensive care.

After several months in hospital and having only been discharged several weeks ago, she was having real difficulties mobilising and needed physiotherapy to help with walking; making returning to parkrun her goal. Two weeks ago, Gibbons made it along to watch husband Vince and daughter Mary run at the event.

Last week she pushed herself to manage a full lap which was half the full 5K. This week she amazingly managed to complete the full course herself, showing real strength, courage and determination by running parts of it. Everyone at the club wishes Bernie well with her continuing recovery.

In other parkrun news, also at Roberts Park, Dave Foyston had a great run to finish first. This was even more impressive due to the fact that he was in a full Halloween costume with scary mask and could see very little of where he was running.

Elsewhere Robert Cunningham finished 6th at Chevin Forest and Sally Malir was 8th female at the same event. At Cliffe Castle in Keighley, Jacqui Foster finished as 10th female. Harry Sime continued his metronomic 5K timekeeping finishing in 20:08 in 20th place, this time at Fountains Abbey.

At Lister Park’s event junior member James Lee had an excellent 6th place finish and finally Samesh Chotai did brilliantly to finish 4th at Skipton.