The pinnacle of the Schools off-track season is the English Schools Cross Country, where every County selects 8 athletes to represent them over Junior, Inter, and Senior races. The event this year will be held at Ardingly, West Sussex on Saturday 15th March.

Many club athletes again had some excellent results as they progressed from local, and regional qualifiers, and some then onto the South-East recently at Newbury.

This year we have a trio of athletes that have qualified all the way through to Ardingly next month, which we can not recall the last time we had three at this event, Chris Akehurst may know the answer to that!

Lily Tyler won the Senior Essex race at Hawkwell, and Alice Begg was just behind in 3rd position, both qualified straight through. Also now Hayden Preston has qualified for Suffolk with his 3rd place Junior position via the Anglian Schools race.

We wish all three athletes the very best next month at Ardingly.