By: Martin Ludford (XC Team Manager – Men)
What an amazing result the Birmingham XC League at Northampton on Saturday 4th December. Following our very encouraging start to the season in race 1 last month, BRAT recorded their best ever result, taking 2nd place in race 2, behind only Birmingham University, and beating all other local rivals in the process. Inspired running by our 24 BRATs meant we had our six A team scorers (Adam Peacock, Henry Brocklehurst, Chris Pickering, Karl Welborn, Dan Robinson, John Stolberg) all home inside the top 40, and our score of 130 put us well clear of Tipton in 3rd place
1 University of Birmingham 3 4 6 8 12 15 48
2 BRAT Club 5 13 19 20 35 38 130
3 Tipton Harriers 16 23 26 31 53 54 203
4 Loughborough Students 7 18 45 49 58 60 237
5 University of Warwick 10 14 41 52 56 74 247
6 Rugby&Northampton AC 9 17 29 48 75 97 275
7 Birchfield Harriers 11 21 33 51 83 84 283
8 Worcester AC 1 25 44 55 110 122 357
9 City of Stoke AC 2 24 43 94 99 103 365
10 Wolverhampton&Bilston 32 46 61 64 77 111 391
11 Coventry Godiva Harriers 30 67 70 80 86 119 452
12 Newcastle (Staffs) AC 27 59 66 79 109 135 475
13 Gloucester AC 22 57 68 105 112 121 485
14 Knowle&Dorridge RC 28 39 87 113 146 150 563
15 Leamington C & AC 85 91 92 96 106 108 578
16 Cheltenham&County 37 115 124 125 129 132 662
This result puts us into 3rd place overall with two races to go.
The BRAT B team (Adam Hill, Paddy Townsend, Ben Carrington, Martin Matthews, Thanos Tsolakis, Abayomi Adedimeji) also had an excellent day, taking 4th place in the B team competition, and now lie 4th overall.
Another dozen BRATs gave added weight to the campaign, (Andrea Vecchi, Paul Jolliffe, Damian Cartland, Matt Gresty, Ben Stokes, Stuart Pearson, James Corden, Toby Close, Joe Preece, Huw Jones, Nigel Miller, David Sansom), many of them finishing above B team scorers from other clubs, well done all.
Big thanks to Sandeep Dhami who took on the role of volunteer finish line assistant for us, to fulfil our obligation to the League and to avoid a points penalty. This is a crucial spot to fill and I’ll be looking for someone else to step in for the next League race in January (close to home at Warley Woods). Richard Carney did the job in race 1 and will do it for race 4 in February, so big thanks to him also.
Last but not least many thanks to our band of travelling supporters who made the trip to cheer on the team , and were rewarded by a memorable afternoon out in the dazzling winter sunshine.
Full results available on the League website https://www.birminghamccleague.co.uk/index.php
There are some photos on the BRAT flickr site https://www.flickr.com/photos/birmingham_rowheath_ac/albums/72157720203020173
Martin Ludford