North District Cross Country Championships, Forres - 29/11/2008

The first of the Championship events in the cross country calendar took place last Saturday in Forres. The severe weather conditions made for an additional challenge to what was already a hilly course for the North District Championships. As well as the usual teams that travel to the North District Leagues, the island teams were competing.

Shetland, Orkney, North Uist and Stornoway added to the excitement of the races as competitors were not able to judge their positions and as such had to run each race as if it was the first of the season. This coupled with the larger field sizes in each of the races meant that no place was secure until the athlete cross the finish line.

Before the actual Championship races got underway, there was a non-championship race for the Under 11 Girls and Boys. This combined race gives the younger athletes the opportunity of competing on Championship day and being part of what they aspire to achieve in cross country. To the delight of the Caithness team, this year's race was won by Lewis Holmes, one of our Sutherland runners who showed the 50 strong field a clean pair of heels.

In the first Championship race, the Under 13 Girls, the Caithness team is still without Erin Mackay through injury and therefore it was always going to be a struggle to compete on a par with the larger teams. Another two of the CAAC runners suffered set backs on the day with Shannon Eyers unable to run due to the extreme cold conditions and Lauren Lafferty falling at the start in the large field of 26 runners.

However the other team mates placed well with Sarah Henderson in 12th, Hannah MacLeod in 14th and Sharon Mackay in 16th. This was enough to secure 3rd team place on the day with a total of 42 points. The winning team was Inverness Harriers with 11 points and silver went to Orkney with 22 points; points being calculated by totalling the first three athletes positions for each team.

The Under 13 Boys were also challenged as their top runner, Ross Gollan from Sutherland had struggled with illness all week and there were questions over his ability to run. Despite this Ross put in a gutsy performance securing third place behind two strong Stronoway athletes and along with Alistair Cooper in 5th place and Rorie Stewart in 11th place, the boys collected silver team medals with a total of 19 points. Lead team was Stornoway with 11 points and in bronze medal place was Inverness Harriers with 43 points.

The Under 15 Girls race was always going to be one of the highlights of the day with the first run on mainland soil of Katie Bristow from Shetland. Katie as a second year Under 15 should have been untouchable by the less experienced first year Under 15's who have the challenge of the longer distance over what can be tough courses. The 2 ¾ mile course however on this occasion proved to be the making of the young upstarts with a fine battle for gold medal finally being won by Mhairi MacLennan from Inverness Harriers, with Emma Dunnett from Caithness just 5 seconds behind her.

Oonagh Dunnett put in her best performance of the session and after a sprint finish with two Stornoway athletes, she took 5th place. Caithness had to call on Nikki MacDonald from Sutherland as there third placed runner due to Sarah MacKinnon not being available and Nikki did the team proud in what was a big ask of her. Nikki's 13th place took the team home in silver position with 20 points, just one point behind Stornoway. Inverness Harriers secured bronze medals with 26 points.

The Caithness Under 15 Boys team comprising of two Caithness and one Sutherland athlete were always the underdogs going into this race. They had taken second and third team placings throughout the Leagues and with the addition of a team from Stornoway, this should have placed them outside of medal contention. However the boys decided to run the race hard and let their performances determine the outcome of the team placings.

After a strong first lap, Jake Anderson struggled with the cold conditions and fell back to 6th place. However with fantastic team support of David Gardner in 5th place and Rob Murdoch having the race of his season in 7th place, the boys scoped gold team medals with 18 points, three points clear of Inverness Harriers. Ross Country took bronze with 25 points.

Duncan Paterson in his first year in the Under 17 Men's age group put in a strong race to finish in 6th place over the 4 mile course.

Graeme Taylor in his first cross country outing of the season showed a return to fitness with a second place in the Under 20 Men's race which is run along with the Senior Men over 6 miles.

The results are as follows:-

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