I dunno.... 7mins is a feasible improvement for someone at my level to comprehend... but could someone of Matt Elkington or Brennan Townsend make that jump when they are already so highly-tuned... I don't want to speculate on what happened to Dan Haworth, there could have been injury or anything... but he gave Finlay Wild a race to the death earlier in the year, and came 7th in the National XC, and he didn't stay the pace on saturday, i think it was going hard at the front.
There's certainly people around with the potential... Carl Bell if he'd continued the same path after that fantastic summer (2018 or19?)
Jacob Adkin, will he return to the fells after destroying some long-time records in 2021...
Finlay Wild...
There's clearly some youngsters at junior level who are going to be serious guys in a couple of years.