Great news from the JK in Northumberland this week - not just that the sun shone, but also that FVO people were in the prizes once again!
Individual highlight of the weekend must be the individual win for Gareth Bryan-Jones in M65L, where only one person could get within eight minutes of Gareth on the second day as he stormed through to win!
Relay day saw another highlight as the FVO Team Prudential Men120+ team took on perennial champions and favourites South Yorkshire - and ran a faster time than their rivals on each of the three legs to record a clear victory! Great work by Roger Goddard saw the team take a narrow lead on leg one, Martin Dean ran the fastest time for leg two to extend the lead, and Jason Inman sped round leg three to complete the win - congratulations!
In the individual races, as well as Gareth's win, FVO's other medallists were Roger Goddard and Jason Inman with 2nd and 3rd in M35L and Steve Barrett with 2nd in M45L - hard earned medals on long tough courses,
In addition there were a number of very near misses for the podium. Martin Dean in M50L, Rona Molloy in W40L, Beccy Osborn in W35L (Beccy also took FVO's only medal at Friday's sprint race, with bronze in W35) and Frances Brown in W14A were all fourth and Daniel Stansfield in M12A was 5th. There was also a first JK win for Grace Molloy in W10B, plus other FVO prizewinners with Victoria Longhurst winning W20L, Becky Carlyle W21L, and Gary Longhurst 2nd in M50S.
Relay day saw many other fine runs but no other medals although the fifth-placed M165+ team of Gareth, Brian Bullen and Dave Coustick came within tantalising seconds of third place. Our leading Men's Open team finished in 11th place, hampered by injury striking Will Hensman on last leg when he was lying in an excellent 6th place. This allowed our Women's Open team to finish higher than the men, congratulations to them on their 9th place!
And it was great also to see FVO field a team in the mini-relay for the first time for a few years - the team of Grace Molloy, Clare Stansfield and Daniel Stansfield ran really well and finished well up the field - Daniel on the final leg came flying through the field to 7th place with the fastest leg time of the day by over a minute, a brilliant effort by him.
