Swansea Harriers Seniors Endurance Winter Grand Prix Final Placings

Well another Swansea Harriers Senior Endurance club Winter League Grand Prix is over, a successful one with the off-track competition dominated by cross country fixtures.

The leagues in particular, the Men’s team pushed Neath Harriers to the wire West Glamorgan Cross Country league, led by individual winner M40 Matthew Harvey. A core group of scorers supported him, and with the last fixture we just missed out on the top spot to Neath by just one league point. The ladies had a good season too, only dropping a couple of points at Kenfig with a plethora of other races also on that day. The team finished 3rd.

The Gwent Cross Country League produced a strong start, and both teams assured their continuing status in Division 1. Senior athlete participation was at times a little scarce for stronger placings overall, but the club held their own across a range of age group categories, with the Mens Overall placing of 7th and Women’s overall 5th place.

Now onto the Club Winter Grand Prix. Dewi Griffths led strongly early on with some superb times in the lead up to marathon training. It is the masters of the club who end up with the higher placings, however, with M70 Alan Davies once again producing some world class age graded times. At this rate we’ll have to tweak the age grading formula! Well done too to M55 Martyn Hughes-Dowdle (3rd) who had a consistent season, placing high in the Gwent, Welsh National Cross Country Championships and West Glamorgan League. M45 Owen Davies just managed to hold onto 2nd place by virtue of 100% attendance at the Gwent and West Glamorgan Leagues. Special mentions too for M35 Patrick Tudor, who completed every Gwent ( along with M55 Simon Merrick and Owen Davies) – despite injuries, Patrick finished high up the V35 Gwent League too. All others in the top 10 have all contributed to team scores and keeping Swansea Harriers in the limelight in national competition.

In the ladies, Congratulations to Kristy Smith (3rd) who completed her first season for the club. She was keen from the moment she joined the club to take part in all the cross country’s. The only blip was Pontypool, where she will never forget the mud-caked trail shoes the course produced. It was bad enough in spikes. A consistent run of races from W50 Diane Brownhill ensured 2nd place, also winning some medals along the way, having a go at anything from 100m through to Ultra distance. In the end, club stalwart W60 Sian Phillips showed her most consistent season for some time, performing at a high level in all competitions and representing Wales at the British Masters International. Congratulations Sian. Similar to the men, all others in the top 10 have all contributed to team scores and kept Swansea Harriers at the top level in all categories.

Top 10 Men:

Top Ten Women:

There were team and individual members receiving medals in other competitions covered elsewhere, but all-in-all it reflects well on the participation this year by all age and training groups. As you can see, both top 10s show a good spread across ages, with this year, dare we say it, a greater number of fixtures run by our masters runners perhaps swaying the results. Nevertheless, let’s hope we can continue with the team effort into the next season.

Click here for full details on all league age-graded results this Winter.