Inter District Cross Country Championships – Irvine 15/01/22
The Inter District Cross Country Championships took place at Beach Park, Irvine this weekend. It was great to see an event back at this location which has been used for National Cross Country Championships and Scottish Schools Championships over the years.
The conditions were good for running, it was a cold dry day and the course was firm with a number of short but challenging hills to break up the rhythm of the runners in a very open course.
Lasswade AC had nine runners competing with five representing the East of Scotland. Freya Mowbray, Andrew McWilliam and Rowan Taylor all u15, Olivia Meikle u17 and Amy Frankland in the senior Women’s team. In addition we had four athletes in the Scottish Universities team, Sarah Tait, Magnus Tait, Christian Graham and Harry Henriksen.
The first Lasswade athlete in action was Freya Mowbray in the u15 girls. Freya went off fairly quick and had a solid run to finish in 24th place.
In the u15 boys Andrew McWilliam and clubmate Rowan Taylor were together battling for 3rd spot for much of the race with Rowan fading slightly towards the end of the race. Both boys did well to finish 3rd and 7th respectively and help the East of Scotland to team gold in that race.
Olivia Meikle was in the u17 women’s race and had a good run to secure a top 20 finish in 17th place.
The next race with Lasswade athletes was the senior women with Sarah Tait and Amy Frankland. Both girls have been running well over the country so far this season with Sarah gaining a couple of u23 Scottish team selections. Sarah had started off quite hard and was up in the top 4 for a large part of the race, Amy had a more conservative start to the race but worked her way back towards Sarah taking the lead at one point but then Sarah rallied and passed Amy on the final run into the finish. Sarah finished 7th and Amy 8th. East of Scotland won team gold.
The final race of the day was the men with three Lasswade athletes all running for Scottish Universities, Christian Graham, Magnus Tait and Harry Henriksen. All had been running well over the country this season with Christian securing Scottish u23 selection for Liverpool and again for Belfast next weekend. Magnus and Harry had also been running well and had been fairly closely matched in their races so far. The race started off fairly fast and Christian wasn’t too far off the pace in about 6th place with Harry also up near the front at the start and Magnus just behind. As the race progressed there wasn’t much movement at the front with Christian finishing 7th Harry and Magnus drifted back a little finishing 18th and 29th respectively. Scottish Universities won the team gold.
Well done to all the athletes on their individual performances and good luck to Sarah and Christian for next weekend in Belfast.
For full results please click here
Photographs courtesy of Neil Renton
