Cross Country 2022-23

[Witton Park]

Came back out of retirement to set up Witton Park for the Lancs Champs yesterday. It was better underfoot than I expected although by the time the men ran I'm sure it was awful

Anyone coming for the Northern later this month, we have an interesting new course, as they wanted me to work out a 3 lapper for the men rather than the 4 lapper we have had in the past.

[Witton Park]

I received an e-mail yesterday informing me that Derby City Council have declared that Markeaton Park was not now available for the Derbys/Notts XC champs, due to take place this Saturday, because of "the state of the ground".

There's a few problems looming for XC and I hope it doesn't spill over on to the fells and other athletics events.

Both the Northern XC and National XC Champs have had to find new venues for 2023 after issues at the original venue.

I believe both were down to support received to re-wild sections of the land the races were to be on so they had to cancel.

I've also seen one Local Authority cancel a long-standing non-athletics annual event with no plans to bring it back, because they have ambitions to be carbon-neutral and the event and the 1'000s of visitors it attracts from around the country are not in keeping with those ambitions.

Pretty soon, we'll not be allowed to attend an event unless we can walk to it :/

[Llani Boy]

Your are probably right WP.

XC and indeed Fell Racing are easy pickings to be bullied into submission or even condemned to death without trial.

Unlike the moneybags sports like football and rugby where hundreds of thousands of players and supporters travel millions of miles each weekend. There are even South African teams in the European Rugby Champions Cup and yesterday, the Nottingham Forest team flew to Blackpool for their FA Cup tie, not that it did them much good.
They appeared to be suffering from jetlag!

[Graham Breeze]

I've also seen one Local Authority cancel a long-standing non-athletics annual event with no plans to bring it back, because they have ambitions to be carbon-neutral and the event and the 1'000s of visitors it attracts from around the country are not in keeping with those ambitions.

Pretty soon, we'll not be allowed to attend an event unless we can walk to it :/

Apart from wallowing in self righteous, holier than thou sanctity and enjoying the misery inflicted by abusing their petty power over people trying to live a simple life whilst going about their every day business: what is the benefit to a local authority in becoming carbon-neutral?

[Witton Park]

Apart from wallowing in self righteous, holier than thou sanctity and enjoying the misery inflicted by abusing their petty power over people trying to live a simple life whilst going about their every day business: what is the benefit to a local authority in becoming carbon-neutral?

I haven't a clue.

I had a discussion on Friday with a Chemistry lecturer from Manchester who felt that an NHS Trust having a Net Zero department, developing policy and ensuring it was implemented, was part of their core responsibilities.

[Travs]

On a similar subject, i read with a sense of increasing rage the book review in the Fellrunner mag about fellrunning and climate change.

Whether you agree with the sentiments of the book or not... surely the hypocrisy of a runner who has built a platform through running in long rounds and foreign races... then using that platform to suggest others limit their long rounds and foreign racing... it defies belief.

Without getting too personal... its clear the world is over-populated and that by far the greatest factor people have on climate change is the number of children they have... correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't the author have a couple of children... i'm not sure he would like it (or anyone else for that matter), if race entries were limited to only those with a maximum of one child.

[Witton Park]

O its clear the world is over-populated and that by far the greatest factor people have on climate change is the number of children they have..

You sound a tad Malthusian Travs
You should pick up a copy of Fossil Future by Alex Epstein. It's not clear at all that the world is over-populated.
We have more people now, but produce more food to feed them, life expectancy is way up in the last 50 years, especially in the developing world.
We didn't mandate the steam engine, or internal combustion engine etc. it was human ingenuity that developed them at a price that was feasible.
The productivity gains we have made by having combine harvesters etc rather than oxen and a plough have helped us progress.
If there is a serious problem with man made climate change we should allow human ingenuity to solve it, and not these rather bonkers international dictats.

[gej]

The fields at the Hampshire champs yesterday were the smallest I have ever seen - 114 senior men, 65 senior women. Just wondering if this is a general trend?

[Llani Boy]

I wondered that too.

Derbyshire results not up yet but whilst looking for them noticed that Cumbria had only 40 senior men and 27 senior women!

[Witton Park]

The fields at the Hampshire champs yesterday were the smallest I have ever seen - 114 senior men, 65 senior women. Just wondering if this is a general trend?

We had issues around 10-12 years ago so we came up with a few ideas which I worked on with Steve Duxbury from Rossendale back in the day and Steve's still doing a great job.

Firstly we worked out that many of the newer clubs felt like the "Championships" wasn't for them. It sounded elitist. So I took it on myself to contact them and in some cases went to one of their committee meetings to explain about them and invite them to attend.
Here in Lancashire a Mid Lancs or Red Rose Cross Country league race can cover clubs from up to 4 counties, so local league can be more competitive than a County Champs.
They hadn't realised that a County Champs could have a more local feel, but also that a few of the local top athletes might turn out who might not run in a league fixture.

Then we made a few changes to the way we ran the event.

We added 2 medals per team, so if 4 counters, we gave out 6 team medals to encourage more to come.

We allowed U20s to count in the Senior team - often U20s do not have any team mates running, rarely enough for an U20 team.
It didn't just help U20s, it also helped smaller clubs finish a team.

We introduced a Team Plate award in the Seniors. If I recall, any team that wasn't in the top 5 (could have been 4) the previous year was eligible for the plate award.
We'd ended up with a situation where the same clubs were contesting the senior teams each year and felt it would spark a bit more interest among smaller and newer clubs.

We also introduced a proper programme. In the first few years we invited ex athletes (David Lewis was one contributor in the first one) to write pieces reflecting on their times running in previous County Champs. We then broadened that out to include current athletes, including juniors.
We put the price up from £1 for the old style A5 few bits of paper to £2 for a glossy, professionally printed programme that put those at the areas and nationals to shame.
It paid for itself and feedback was excellent.

It seems to have worked. I'm not on the County AA any more but we saw an increase in numbers over the first 4-5 years of this and fields were of a decent size on Saturday.

Remember though as mentioned above, County Champs will always be smaller. Our Mid Lancs Cross Country league while based around Lancashire, has clubs from Cumbria, Merseyside and Greater Manchester.

Another factor is that a league cross country is very much a club day out. That's isn't always possible with County Champs because of the County qualification issue.
We have clubs around the border areas who draw athletes from different counties. I think Salford Harriers have had runners at 3 or 4 of the North West Champs events on some occasions.