6 March 2010
On Saturday we were eventually crowned the fastest school for cross country running in the South East Schools Championships at Harrow School. It certainly felt for the boys that this bold statement may be a well-placed one, since for some senior runners it was a culmination of three years of waiting and, especially for this season, seven months of very hard training. All of a sudden the weekly 2-hour runs on the Ridgeway and coach Ashton's speed sessions in the cold November afternoons, in faint light and when everyone else had gone home, were well worth it.
The seniors won beating all their main rivals convincingly. There was no strong independent school missing from the fixture list, the course was very hard and all the other teams looked very strong indeed. Our boys won in the hardest race there is on the independent schools' circuit, we think. Interestingly our six scoring senior runners were so very close to each other suggesting that, comparatively, we do not rely too heavily on the luxury of talent alone; rather we train hard and smartly. Suffice to say that after Saturday many raced on Sunday in the Oxford Mail league and all runners, as I write, have just completed another brutal speed session... 'nough said...
Alexis Christodoulou
