It may not technically be the last cross-country of the season but for those not making the trip to Sunderland for the Nationals and who haven't qualified to represent the county, the rearranged Southern Champs were a final opportunity to dirty the spikes this season.

Last Saturday was the new date put in place after the original one was cancelled in January and so as a result participant numbers were a fair bit down on previous years as many people had entered based on the first date and couldn't make the second. Having said that, LBAC still had 22 people doning the kit and Richard, Amy and Nick also offering invaluable support to still have a very good turn-out.

The day started early for the U15 boys, who were first up on the schedule of events and Kieran Philpott and Henry Mead both made the journey down to Hampstead Heath to round off their first full season. They both had very respectable runs to come home in 151^st and 172^nd respectively. Up next was Sarah Plummer in the U13 girls. Sarah has had a very strong season and was the first of 11 runners to finish in the top half of the field on Saturday and she ran very well indeed to come home 97^th in the race.

It doesn't take too long for the grass of the heath to turn into something of an epic quagmire, but despite this Becca Mead and Izzy Bidlake-Hull put themselves through a lap of the course to ensure that they can say they've completed the Southern Championships.

The older lads were a little lower in numbers than usual due to the advent of half term, but Brian Foulger and Jordan Clay both had excellent runs and battled with each other all the way around the course. In the end, Brian managed to get ten seconds on Jordan and finish an excellent 67^th while Jordan was just six places behind.

Having spent most of the season competing with the seniors, Billy Mead had the chance to run in the U20's at the Southerns. At this age there are not many people of low standard out running in these races and it is testment to Billy's improvement that despite being two years young in the age group he finished 40^th out of 82 in the field.

The date change had unfortunately ruined our entries in the ladies race and only Amelia Wallace and Anna Mead were able to make the journey down, but were full of enthusiasm for the joys of Parliament Hill. Both ladies took on the relentless 9K course without hesitation and were rewarded in the watery winter sunshine with 159^th and 236^th respectively. The consistent representation of the club's ladies this year has been fantastic and long may it continue.

As with the ladies, a number of senior men had to pull out of the race after the change of date so we were down to ten of the original entries. However, Elliot Hind came for his first club run on Wednesday and signed up to the hardest cross-country of the season there and then. Additionally, Andy roped in his cousin Greg to come and wear the purple and yellow as well as he lives locally to the course and regularly does events with the club.

The senior men's course is three hellish 3 mile laps wear the mud never stops and there is only occasional respite from hills. The one saving grace of the course this year is that the mud was a little less sticky than it sometimes is, but did mean that it splashed up everywhere, so within a few hundred yards we were all coated front and back.

There were nearly 550 people in the race and prior to the start Mark Haynes posted that he was aiming not to come last which was comfortably acheived as he battled early on with Greg O'Toole. Greg's late entry meant that he ran the course in trainers (!) but still managed to get the better of 30 people. Packing out the middle of the field for us were Warren Rose (294), Gary Stratford (345) and Joe Hurley (384) who helped us to our best turn-out for the event in many years.

Ahead of Warren, Chris Norman and James Bell battled most of the way until Chris pulled away on the last lap to close out the scoring team of six in 231. The real competition though was between three people approaching the race from different directions. Elliot is newly back to running after a couple of years off, Andy Inchley has had a frustrated month out with injury and Stuart Blofeld is training like a crazy fool for his big race in the US. All of this though, meant that they finished within ten seconds of each other with Andy (184) pipping Stu (191) and Elliot (193) in the end.

The leading runners of the day though were Tom Inchley, who is continuing his return to fitness and has done all of the races this season. He was a minute in front of Andy but the outstanding run of the team was undoubtedly from Pete Mackrell whose 59 minute race saw him lead the team home in 115^th place. These performances all added up to our best ever result in the team competition with the men acheiving an almost unbelievable 12^th place out of 31 completed teams. Great work boys.