Closing 5 mile. The traditional cross country season finale saw 21 athletes toe the line for the Closing 5 mile, preceded by a small but strong field of 6 in the Junior 3km race.

The 4 boys in the Junior only event decided to use it as a training run, and finish hand-in-hand, and so with one U13G and one U15G we had 6 winners.

On a similar theme, a few of the runners in the 5 mile handicap also stopped short of ‘full gas’. 

Under 13 Luc Jones was successful in outwitting the handicapper, being 1st home by some 2 minutes, while Jasmine Stephens and Liz Bunn also ran strongly to complete the top 3 on the day. Outgoing president Steve Pairman was not far behind in 4th.

In the season long competition the handicapper’s system of recutting scoring to include only those who could have completed the (maximum) 5 scoring events including this one meant that David Adams held onto his narrow lead over Jon Pairman despite  saving his legs for the Southern Road Relays the next day. Third overall Greg Firth was also not at his fastest given he was about half way through a 20+ mile training run on the start line. Congratulations David and Greg for completing all 7 events in the series.

Full results of the Closing 5 and the final Bennett Cup results are in the tables below, along with photos by Mike Peel: