The second fixture of the season produced a repeat showing of the first fixture as John Gilbert stormed away from the field showing impressive strength on the hills as he steadily built up a gap on the rest of the field to win by well over a minute. He “plans to do a full cross country season in my build up to the London Marathon” and is targeting a top 20 place in ‘the National’. Kent AC team mate Jim Savage adopted similar tactics as he secured an easy second place by nearly a minute from league regular John Hamblin of Walton AC.

Kent AC’s captain, Rich Munn, showed a return to form as he reduced the gap on Hamblin throughout the second lap to come home 4th whilst new boy Jon Gill showed his potential as he pulled away from the chasing pack in fine style to come in an excellent 6th place.

Behind him there was a real ‘battle royale’ as no less than 5 of the next 6 were wearing the Navy Blue of Kent AC. All of them train in our ever improving B group, well organised by David Child, with U20 George Quinn using his track speed to lead them home, despite having run a 4 min 30 sec mile race in the morning. Next in was talented Hesham Dahman who just held off the first V40 in the race home, Luke Armitage, with the ever improving Stuart Beaney and Simon Loach coming home in 11th and 12th places.

Another new recruit, David Pelecka, from Junior Field’s group made a great debut in 16th place – a great run for an U20 on his debut to close our scoring 10 runners home. Excellent backing up from Tim Connell, Stuart Scott, Ryan Gibbons, Quaser Mays, Richard Archer and Nick Park helped greatly as they all pushed other clubs’ scorers down and nearly all would have been in the top 5 scorers for any other club!

So another massive win and we now have a 600 point gap on the other teams - so it still looks ‘game on’ for another promotion.

Ken