Our senior men may not have qualified for the National 6 Stage this year, but the club were still represented at Sutton Park by our fantastic U13 girls team.

Racing over 3.88km is a new experience for these girls and is a little on the far side for their age group.  While they will now look forward to shorter races, they all coped well with the extra distance that needed to be covered.

The young athletes relays seem to be increasing in popularity.  76 teams started the U13 girls race with 65 completing a whole team.  The girls I invited to run for us were those that put in the best performances over the two relay events at Blackpool and Sportcity.  As they all said yes, we had a very strong team out.

First up for the team was Aisling McHale.  She ran a well paced run to come home in an impressive 23rd place.  The 1st leg of these events is always loaded with quality and Aisling has shown that she’s really not far behind the best girls in the country.

Our second runner was Esme Pearson.  The 2nd leg is always a tough one to pace, especially after such a strong 1st leg, but Esme ran well to keep the girls in a good position coming home in 35th.

Third up was Verity Charnley who was perhaps the most improved from her performance at Sportcity a few weeks ago.  She crossed the line in 34th to give us our highest U13 girls finish since… well, who knows?  It’s a long time since we’ve had this good a team!

I think overall this was a better performance than the one at Sportcity.  Unfortunately, there was a slightly disappointing representation from the North of England (although Vale Royal won!) meaning that direct comparison is not easy, but they did beat the a trio from Stockport Harriers that had got the better of them in Manchester.  They were 6th Northern team and if you take away the B and C teams, 27th A team.

With all of these girls being in the lower half of this age group, competition for places and some potentially strong U11 girls moving into this category next year, there’s real hope that we could put out one, or even two teams next year and do even better!

But they ought to keep away from McDonald’s.  Who knew they had those pre-ordering things to skip the queues?

Times and positions:

34 Altrincham & District AC 48:45
Aisling Mchale (23) 15:04 Esme Pearson (35) 17:02 Verity Charnley (34) 16:39

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