Pride of place last Saturday must obviously go to John Gilbert’s triumph in winning the Kent County Cross Country title. However, a fine overall team performance shouldn’t go by with comment. As Ken has reported, John ran a tremendous race putting a fair distance between himself and Mike Coleman by the end of the race. The accomplished Medway runner has of course notched up a number of county titles in the past and is a formidable opponent over the country.

With a strong team out we had hopes of possible victory, but although in both the six and twelve to score we were close, it was not to be. To have four in the first ten one might have thought victory would have been ours, but we came up just short. Surprisingly, we were third with just a few points separating us from Maidstone and then Tonbridge in the six to score. We then had to settle for second place in the twelve to score due to Tonbridge’s superior packing. Nevertheless, the team performed well and it augers well for some of the targeted races later in the year. On the come back trail, Jermaine was a highly creditable fifth after a year plagued by injury. Not far behind in ninth and tenth were new recruit Jim Savage and the ever reliable James Connor (who has also had his injury problems). A bit of wait then before Rich Munn came in 27th - a position that shows the depth of this year’s field. Andy Pickett closely followed Rich in 29th. . Steve McGrory who had literally got off his sick bed to run came in after Andy in 36th. Our next scorer (38) was Andy Moreton, our 400-metre man in training for the marathon. Following on from Andy we had the competitive B Team battle which on this occasion was headed by the allegedly next to no mileage Chris Greenwood, in 42nd. Thereafter came his B Team rivals, Luke Armitage 45, Lee Haze 52, Stuart Beaney 59, Simon Loach 64, Dan Hale 76 and Stuart Scott 84 (just failing to catch Steve Smythe). Closing in at 137 came the evergreen Julian Spencer-Wood and a little further back, 145 Nick Park.

A memorable day, particularly for John’s victory, but also for a team performance that points to good things to come in future.

Andy G