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
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