It was a severely depleted Manx contingent of just two who competed in the Liverpool Cross Challenge at Sefton Park on Saturday.
A delay of several hours to this morning’s flight meant that Leighton Curphey, Laura Dickinson and Jamie Hayes missed out, and it looked like the UK based Lewis siblings Cai and Hope were non-starters.
That left Sam Perry and London-based Sarah Astin as the only two to start, but both ran extremely well on a course that wasn’t too bad underfoot early on but had become an absolute quagmire by the end of the afternoon.
Sefton Junior Men’s Race
Sam, representing Northern AC, had an excellent run to finish 33rd in the Junior Men’s race, run over quite a short distance of 4.5 kilometres.
That made it very fast all the way, and Sam worked his way up through the field which included the U17 men.
With the U20 race being the Great Britain selection trial for the European Cross-Country Championships in Turkey in two weeks, the standard was sky-high and Sam should be very pleased with his run.
Senior Women’s
Sarah Astin, running for Belgrave Harriers, was targeting her first GB selection, and was well in the hunt in the first half of the Senior Women’s race over 8 kilometres.
On the first of three laps of glutinous mud she was in the top six seniors (the U23s ran concurrently but over two laps).
On the second and third laps Sarah found herself in a battle with GB Olympian Jess Warner-Judd who has made a welcome recent comeback after health issues. Sarah came home just behind Jess in 10th place.
Although disappointed to miss out on selection Sarah was pleased with her run, especially as she is still adjusting to a different training set-up following a coaching switch.
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