Westhope and the Summer League – Ladies report

Race Reports

Another great turnout of Croft ladies at this the final of the Herefordshire summer league. Every race saw everyone give there best and it is so great to be rewarded by winning the league – it is just the reward we need for having such a fantastic team.
Although the front two ladies do have such an influence on the final result, thanks to the way the results are sorted everyone’s position counts as position is turned into points and keeping rival team members behind you helps to increase their points thus lowering their teams posistion.

A fantastic season for Irina, first Croft lady in all the races she did and finishing second lady overall. Next Croft lady home on the night was Gemma in 5th (winning third SF medal – which I have for you Gemma) but what a fantastic team finish with Robyn only 28 seconds behind and Kelly coming in next, 6th and 7th ladies.
Jo T was fifth Croft lady home,taking home the FV35 bronze medal. If my maths is correct and it had been just a ladies team as in the winter league, we would have won the ladies team race too, although it is too complicated for me to work out the whole season scores – Mike definintely gets my respect for that!

It was great to have some new faces for the summer league and Louise Reynolds has only been a member for a few weeks but was able to put it a great performance to come in 40.10, I would have liked to have seen the finish because a Aisling Freeth of Couriers had the same time.

Steph Main has had a fabulous summer league too. With her family commitments she isn’t always able to make races but when she does she runs well, taking home the FV45 gold medal and well done to Carol taking home the silver in the same age category.

Roxy was feeling the hills in her legs as she is still recovering after her fantastic iron man triathlon performance just over a week before (finishing second in her agegroup and seventh overall – amazing over such eye watering distances), and I was just able to finish ahead of her.
Other new faces for the summer league are Kerry and Steph, both improving with every race and it was great the Steph and Tory both got medals for second and third in the FV50 category.

Looking at the photos, it looks like Lisa, Rachel, Louise and Gemma ran most of the first lap together and I am imagining a hard fought battle for places as they didn’t finish together, Lisa just 5 seconds ahead of Rachel at the line, followed less than 30 seconds later by Louise and then Gemma.

It was really good to have Tory and Liza along to support as well – thanks ladies, it’s great to hear someone you know shout out for you as your run past.

Well done to everyone who ran for Croft in this summer league. They are never easy races, but this year were made harder by the hot sun and hard packed, dusty earth. Not to mention the change in schedule due to the football meaning some who may have wanted to run all the races may not have been able to, or maybe it enabled some to run who originally wouldn’t have been able to. Who knows if all this worked in Crofts favour? All I know is that this year has seen us win the winter and the summer league and I will leave it to the Croft historians to let us know whether that has ever happened before but I can truly say what an amazing year it has been to be the Croft Lady Captain – thank you team, you are brilliant.

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