BRAT Juniors Win @ Heart of England League
The recent Heart of England competition at Stourport was a day of miracles. Firstly, the weekend began and was punctuated by torrential downpours. Alas, those competing on the Saturday at the Mason Trophy may have got pretty wet! Not only did we manage to escape the rain, but the sprinters also enjoyed a home straight tailwind, it NEVER happens. I imagine the back straight wasn’t quite so kind! After our absolute demolition of the opposition in the first match back in April, where we won by 350 points, I decided to shuffle the team around. We had a large number of athletes that hadn’t competed in the league before and quite a lot that hadn’t ever competed on the track before. Big pressure, well done guys. I was therefore a bit shocked and, I have to admit, a bit worried when some of the other teams arrived on coaches, unfurled…
BRAT Juniors Dominate at First Heart of England League
This was our first real league fixture since 2019. We are currently in division 3 and our aim is to be promoted at the end of the season. We had one fixture (that we won) last year, but that didn’t count towards promotion due to it being a fixture based on location rather than the actual teams in our league. This time around, we were up against Bromsgrove & Redditch, Tamworth, Bicester, Corby and a few other teams. To say that we won would be an understatement. Of the 8 gender/age groups on the day, ranging from u11g to u17m, we won EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. We scored a total of 819.5 points, with second and third places scrapping it out between themselves on 457 and 448 respectively. We scored almost the same number of points as the next two teams combined! How did we manage to pull this…
English Schools XC Champs & Midlands (not quite) 5k Champs!
English Schools XC Champs A small number of BRAT’s achieved the fantastic honour of representing the West Midlands School team and Worcestershire schools at the ESAA English Schools Cross Country Championship’s in Hop Farm, Kent. The weather was more like that of the track season and not cross country, and the course was extremely flat and fast with hardly any mud! The first race of the day to include BRAT athletes was the Junior boys. Jack Price was our 1st athlete home in 191st place, this is a fantastic achievement considering it’s only Jack’s second ever cross country! Niklas Van Mourik was next in 271st place after getting spiked early on in the race. In the Inter boys race we had 3 athletes competing. Will Walker was first home in 135th after being dead last at the start of the race, he was followed home by Morgan Hill in 221st…
BRAT XC Juniors – Inter Counties Cross Country Championships – Loughborough Saturday 12 March
The race is the UK cross country championships and incorporates the UK Cross Challenge Final. The senior and U20 races are used every two years as the World Cross Country Trial race to select the Great Britain teams so its the top domestic race in the calendar. Athletes have to be selected by their counties to compete with 8 running in each of the junior age groups and 9 in the seniors. To even make it to this event, representing the county, is a huge achievement. Well done to the athletes who competed. Some of the races had over 300 competitors! For most it was their first time in a National Championship race so it was a excellent learning experience for their development. U13B Seb Stendall 148th, U13G Alba Smith Pena 242nd, U15B Dylan Teasdale 229th, U17M Alex Dickson 133rd, Alice Stewart 128th. Sen Men Jonny Cullen 263rd & Matt…
A final fling for the BRAT Junior XC athletes
This is just a brief summary e-mail to round off all the outstanding junior performances in this season’s cross-country league. As a club, it looks like we have taken a massive step in the right direction, with an overall finishing position, after all fixtures, of 5th place. This is a huge improvement on where we were when the league last ran 2 years ago where we finished 12th. The season before that we were 14th. Looking at the overall results, there is a clear distinction between the larger, well-established clubs and some of the smaller local clubs. I think we have successfully bridged that gap this season and have infiltrated the higher ranks, beating teams such as Birchfield and Tipton. As has been said throughout the series, everyone that took part in the cross-country events this winter has played a role. Every point counts, every position counts. Congratulations to you…
BRAT JUNIORS – ANOTHER STRONG XC PERFORMANCE
Well done team! Here are the totals after 4 of the 5 league cross-countries: Lots more stats and results here. As you can see, we are in 5th place after 4 events. This is something that we can be proud of, especially given the calibre and history of some of the teams below us. Everyone involved plays a part, so thank you to the coaches, team managers, parents….and of course the athletes themselves. A big shout out to Darcey who managed to lose a shoe at some point on the course and keep going until the end! It may be a tough task for us to catch 4th place overall in our next league XC, but let’s give it everything we’ve got! Bookmark the date in your diary, let’s aim for a record turnout to finish the season! Keep strong, keep training! Individual results as follows can be found below. Note that these…
Another amazing BRAT junior XC performance!
Before I go into how well you all did (yes, you did well!), I want to mention about how you, and we as a team can be even better. This isn’t to take anything away from anyone’s performance, but rather, it’s a sign of how far the team has come. We are challenging the best teams, there’s no reason why we can’t break into the top 3 at the next event. You have 6 weeks until the next league race in Walsall (16th January). 6 weeks is a decent amount of time to put in some consistent training, and maybe add in a few additional races too. With regards to training, you know the drill. Keep consistent and work hard. It will pay off. Talk to the coaches if you want a specific training strategy. All of the coaches bring a wealth of experience and have all run cross-country, we…
Men’s XC team shine at Northampton
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…
Another Inspired BRAT Junior XC Performance!
Warley Woods, race 2. Now, juniors, I know you may feel you worked hard, ran your socks off (or your shoes off, in 2 cases I know of…!), pushed to the line and given it absolutely all you had. BUT…what I have to say is “think of the parents!”. Do you know how hard it is to support at Warley Woods? I saw mums and dads going up and down those hills over and over again, toddlers and pets in tow, screaming at the top of their lungs! So, parents, you have my full respect when I say WELL DONE! As for the juniors, yes, I suppose you didn’t do too bad too. In addition to some top 3 and top 10 placings, we had a much strengthened U15 girls team, with 3 of the runners making their season debut. A special mention to Tilly & Katie who kept going…
BRAT JUNIORS’ AMAZING XC PERFORMANCE
What a day out! A few people have contributed to this write-up, but I’d just like to say a huge WELL DONE to everyone that got involved in our first cross-country since 2019. I’m fully aware of how daunting a task it must have been, I did start my athletics journey as a cross-country runner, many (MANY!) years ago after all. No matter how you felt you performed, I, along with the various team managers and coaches thought you did fantastic. Have no doubt, your contribution to the team is absolutely invaluable. As Dan mentions below, every BRAT runner that overtakes someone, knocks a rival team one place down the results! Bookmark the next date, a home fixture for us at Warley Woods on the 14th of November! If you’re not already involved and want to be, e-mail me here. U11 Girls 8 girls toed the line for the first…
NATIONAL ROAD RELAY 6 STAGE – MEN’S REPORT
Author: Richard Gray I have also shown teams B-H results from The Midland 6 Stage which were not in the previous report. The perfect non-storm greeted us at Sutton. Around 15 degrees; hidden sun; wind at 2mph and a gale force 3mph gust. PBs beckoned! We fielded two teams who had qualified in great style; only the second time having two teams in what is the highest quality team race of the year. There was a great mood, only marred by late changes which had left the B team short of a leg. Manager should have sorted this; so this was on B teams minds. Off we went, the A team fronted by Dan Robinson. Always reliable, but with a theoretically weakened team due to inevitable marathon damage, we needed quicker times to match The Midland performance. Indeed, Dan was 6 seconds quicker. We were on the right path. Tactically…
MIDLAND ROAD RELAY 6 STAGE MENS REPORT – 2021
Here is a short report on our superb performance. It is short without the banter as I do not know some of the athletes well enough, and performances are limited. There are so many teams that I have only reported in any detail for A,B; so apologies for this and any errors. It was wonderful to gather again at Sutton after being locked away for so long. A lovely day greeted us, perhaps a bit warm, but the same for everyone. With all the juniors, the women’s teams, and 8 men’s teams, it was quite a gathering. Just needed a barbie to set the day up. On the other hand, perhaps too much temptation for late leg athletes. This is our biggest turnout for any relay, easily surpassing all our rivals. There were quite a few last minute changes, necessitating swapping same legs between teams for safety of avoiding a…