By Richard Pickering

In the strangest of years we started the year doing virtual events and performed very well in the EA 5mile relay and mile events. In the latter we were first V45 team and first V55 team. The women finished 5th. 

 In the five mile event which was measured as a combination of men’s and women’s teams we achieved 17 in the qualifying round which put us into the national final where we finished a creditable 22. Notably the performance of the women helping the overall position as other clubs struggled to have 6 quality female performances.  

Things seemed slow to get going as restrictions lifted but we seem to have got the interest back into x country now with the U13, U15 and Vets champs taking on December 04.  The most recent highlight though was the Gold and Silver achieved for the women at the Stebbing 10 with Heidi Hogan-Steel taking the overall win. The men took bronze and evergreen Colin Ridley and Paul Mingay won their respective age categories with the latter going on to win the British Masters national 10k race the following weekend.

 Allen Smalls continued to defy age and common sense with a series of impressive ultra performances. 

 Changes to the groups and the way we train has been well observed by all members and overall it is working well with several new coaches coming on board to add to the existing coaching team.  Some ‘club’ park runs have been planned to help to bring the groups together more, the first of which was at Highlands on 20 November and saw a good turnout of harriers running and supporting.

In junior endurance there have been some excellent recent performances from U20 Thomas Colsell and U15 Lyla Belshaw who has won every x country race she has run thus far.  Closely followed by U13 Isla Widdowson who finished 4^th in the last Essex league race qualifying her, along with Lyla, for the South of England Inter-Counties championships taking place on December 11.

Colchester Harriers have continued to have good showing at the NESS Sunday x country league and currently lead the way after two events at the point of this report.