From Petra Bijsterveld…
Photo credit Stew Knowles
The third race in the WYXC series took place in Thornes Park in Wakefield on the first properly cold day this autumn, however without rain and with very dry ground it made for good running conditions once you had overcome the horror of taking all your warm layers off. The course had a nice hill which the women had to tackle three and the men five times, because underfoot conditions were so good and grippy it was actually possible to really benefit from the downhill even for a terrible descender like myself. The 10 Ilkley men did exceedingly well with Tom and Nathan numbers 2 and 3, hot on the heels of winner Joe Sagar, and Ilkley ending as the second team. Unfortunately the women were somewhat thinner on the ground with only three of us running. Rachel put in a strong performance and finished as 2nd W45, and Diane as always well ahead of me despite my best efforts not to let that gap increase too much. I had enjoyed an ‘extended warm-up’ by running a 5.5m race in the morning in the WY Winter League (as second claim for LBT) and found the legs were still willing to do some hard work in the afternoon. Fittingly I hadn’t given my all to LBT and kept my best effort for Ilkley, of course. It may not have been fast but I beat my time on the same course from 3 years ago which at my age counts as a win!
Senior women (5,750 m):
(1 19:58 Katy Wood, City of York)
21 22:49 Rachel Carter
71 29:47 Diane Kitchen
73 30:37 Petra Bijsterveld
84 ran
Senior men (10,000m):
(1 31:00 Joe Sagar, Spenborough)
2 31:09 Tom Adams
3 31:23 Nathan Edmondson
29 35:11 Matt Cox
44 36:18 Steven Gott
45 36:27 Dan McKeown
63 38:27 Stephen Coy
74 39:36 Tim Ashelford
77 39:52 Jonathan Turner
94 41:29 David Westhead
106 42:38 Mark Iley
138 ran
Ilkley men were 2nd team