Written by DR   

Here's Debbie's assessment.

Surrey Ladies Cross Country League Match 3 January 10th, Farthing Down, Coulsdon

By Debbie Raymond

With the festivities not far behind us but a week away from the counties,the ladies resumed their fight to stay in Division 1 of the Surrey Ladies League at Farthing Down, Coulsdon.

With snow and ice covering all of the one lap course and the temperature not rising above a couple of degrees below freezing, it was to be a testing race. We had hot sunshine for race 1 at Nork Park and narrowly missed the deluge at race 2 in Lightwater Country Park. Race 3 will be remembered for the white stuff and the cold!

In the U15/U17 race,Molly Renfer running as an u17 was our highest placed athlete finishing 1st in a time of 17:31 with Gaby Miles finishing an incredible 4 seconds later as an u15 in 5th place. There were no other K&P athletes in this race or in the u13 race.

In the senior race we had 7 athletes toeing the start line. As usual Rachel Burbridge started our scorers in 10th (25.20) happily beating some of her rivals. Jenny Rice followed in 58th (27.52) with Maddy Hardwick 72nd 40 seconds later. Nicky Atkins 88th and Susanne Dietrich 89th kept each other going the whole way to finish within 2 seconds of each other a minute after Maddy (29.37 & 29.39 respectively) to complete our scoring team.

Following on from her great run the week before at the counties,Johanna Gibbons finished in 112th position (30.58) while yours truly brought up the rear in 125th (32.02) to ensure no one got lost in the snow. There were 169 finishers in division 1. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the hot chocolate, cake and biscuits after and we wondered what race 4 has in store for us at Lloyd Park, Croydon on 7th February