ILKLEY Harriers achieved their first-ever clean sweep at the opening West Yorkshire Cross Country League race on Saturday.

Harriers filled all three podium positions in the men's event in Keighley, Tom Adams leading them home in 24 minutes and seven seconds, with Jack Wood (24:11) and Dom Coy (24:16) closely following in second and third.

It was the perfect start to the four-event series and Steve Gott and Tim Ashelford also made the top 50 as Ilkley placed third in the team standings.

In the ladies race, Ilkley were the sixth team overall, with the first four counting.

Kate Archer was 13th in 20:36, with Sarah Pickering 22nd (21:14), Beth Massey 45th (23:20) and Sally Malir 52nd (23:56).

Fresh from their runs, Archer, Wood and Gott headed off to the Lake District on Sunday for the Hodgson Brothers Mountain Relay, one of the highlights of the fell running calendar.

The event had been in some doubt earlier in the week on account of the heavy rainfall, so conditions were even more testing than usual at the longest-running mountain relay in the country.

The race is a tough one, with four legs run in pairs and each throwing up their separate challenges.

They included hard climbs, steep descents and careful navigation on difficult terrain.

The Ilkley men's team got off to a superb start as Gott and Nick Helliwell powered to 15th place on the first leg and that set them up for a top-20 spot overall from the 68 squads who finished.

Matt Cox and Dan McKeown combined on the long second leg, handing over to Paul Carman and Iain Gibbons (11th on leg three, the Harriers' highest placing of the day) before Wood and Nathan Edmondson rounded off a good day's work in a cumulative time of 4:22:58.

The ladies clocked 5:54:26, with Archer and Helen Waddington tasked with the tough final leg.

The same day - albeit on somewhat flatter terrain - saw Pete De Sanctis produce a superb time of three hours, 15 minutes and 31 seconds for the Chester Marathon.

That was good enough for 329th place in a field of over 3,000 runners.

Down in Cardiff, Derek Oliver was comfortably in the top five per cent of finishers as he clocked 1:33:03 in the the half marathon around the Welsh capital - with more than 20,000 taking part. That also earned him 17th place in the M55 age category.

The weekend saw the 15th anniversary of the ground-breaking Parkrun series and globetrotting 75-year-old Geoff Howard was an impressive sixth in Florence while Catherine Gibbons was 19th a little closer to home in Skipton.

Results:

WYXC 1, Keighley, Saturday

Senior men, 3rd team

1 24:07 Tom Adams

2 24:11 Jack Wood

3 24:16 Dom Coy

27 27:24 Steve Gott

45 28:39 Tim Ashelford

74 30:10 Mike Abrams-Cohen

78 30:19 Steve Murray

115 33:21 Paul Calderbank

116 33:27 Mark Iley

118 33:49 Rob Budding

137 36:00 Malcolm Pickering

139 36:14 Phil Chappell

147 38:12 Michael Ho

161 finished

Senior ladies, 6th team

(1 19:03 Lucy Robinson, Wakefield)

13 20:36 Kate Archer

22 21:14 Sarah Pickering

45 23:20 Beth Massey

52 23:56 Sally Malir

63 24:45 Jane Bryant

80 26:34 Joanne Williamson

84 27:22 Petra Bijsterveld

87 27:59 Anna Pickering

100 finished

Hodgson Brothers Mountain Relays, Sunday

1 3:36:33 Keswick

20 4:22:58 Ilkley

15 43:56 Steve Gott, Nick Helliwell

31 82:20 Matt Cox, Dan McKeown

11 56:53 Paul Carman, Iain Gibbons

17 79:47 Jack Wood, Nathan Edmondson

66 5:54:26 Ilkley ladies

43 49:43 Bernadette Raven, Fay Walsh

49 91:57 Helen Wood, Lucy Williamson

53 74:41 Alison Weston, Joyce Marshall

67 138:05 Helen Waddington, Kate Archer

68 teams finished

Chester Marathon, Sunday

(1 2:29:28 Tom Charles, Trafford Athletic Club)

329 3:15:31 Pete De Sanctis

3,082 finished

Cardiff Half Marathon, Sunday

(1 59:30 Leonard Langat, Kenya)

809 1:33:03 Derek Oliver

20,301 finished

Parkruns, Saturday

Bath Skyline

(1 16:21 Alex Parsons, Team Bath AC)

119 26:43 Ros Brown

342 ran

Bradford

(1 17:47 Martin Fillingham, Saltaire Striders)

31 21:46 Oscar Street

184 27:30 Paula Reynier

509 ran

Centre Vale

(1 17:48 Andrew Worster, Vegan Runners)

27 24:03 Will Worboys

151 ran

Firenze

(1 17:23 David Hartley, Melbourne Midday Milers)

6 22:10 Geoffrey Howard

58 ran

Skipton

(1 17:19 Julian Hood, Skipton AC)

19 22:08 Catherine Gibbons

53 24:32 Harry Sime

202 ran

Tooting Common

(1 16:57 Aaron Wilson, U/A)

23 19:33 Rob Cunningham

677 ran