1 & 8 Nov 2025 - Mansfield & Parliament Hill
Reports by Micah Evans
National XC Relays – 1 November, Mansfield
The team travelled to Mansfield for what is a cracking event with full junior age groups through to seniors and a great atmosphere. The weather was dry, albeit with a chilly wind but pretty decent conditions for XC racing.
We fielded a full first team and 3/4 of a second team, with a couple of unfortunate withdrawals due to injury / work commitments, which is exactly 1 and 3/4 more teams than we managed last year!
Sam Parsons – who’s been in excellent form on the country placing Top 10 in the first two Kent Leagues – was on Leg 1 for us, alongside a raft of some of the country’s top distance runners, including GB athlete, Olympian and mile road world record holder Elliot Giles!
Sam ran our quickest leg by some distance, clocking a rapid 16:19 on a new course layout that whilst relatively firm underfoot for the most part, but softer and muddier in the woods, where two separate log jumps lay in wait.
Ryan Weston took over on Leg 2 and ran our second quickest leg in 16:50, moving us up 5 places, even more impressive given he was racing in Adidas EVO SLs, perhaps not known for their prowess on the country, especially questionable in the wooded section of the course!
Ryan handed over to me and I ran 17:23, slower than I’d have liked, perhaps on tired legs, but still managing to move us up 3 places.
Angus Harrington (1:47 800m) was on our anchor leg, with a welcome return to racing for the club after a college stint in the States (and with a new job requiring 100? hour weeks not leaving much time for training!) – he closed with a consistently paced 17:37 moving us up 4 places into our finishing position of 50th.
Our second team got off to a solid start with Will Reedman-White’s form improving race by race and running 18:01 for our quickest B team leg.
Will handed over to Sam Aldridge, one of our Dads who’d also been there since around 10am, unfortunately suffering from a migraine all day, including not being able to see properly shortly before the race, so his 18:19 was a good effort and moved the team up 16 places.
Sam handed over to our third leg runner, another Dad, Barry Horgan, who closed in 23:02 as our final runner, the incomplete team finishing 149th.
There were some excellent club performances throughout the day, the highlights of which were 🥇 for our U17 boys team of Joseph Hill, Oliver Ward and Joe Scanes and a brilliant 🥉 for our ladies team of Hannah Clark, Chloe Taylor-Costin and Niamh Bridson-Hubbard, all of whom ran superbly to claim bronze behind the very strong Belgrave and Herne Hill teams.
So an enjoyable day’s racing perhaps summed up best by Elliot Giles, who turned out for his club Birchfield and ran 14:59 for 11th place on an incredibly competitive first leg but as part of an incomplete team with his clubmates clocking 19:15 and 21:31 respectively, finishing in 147th place – all about the team! And then very kindly signing his spikes and giving them to two of our young U13 stars along with his race bib whilst standing there in his socks!
London XC Champs – 8 November, Parliament Hill
After the London Youth Games XC action earlier in the day, with Bromley’s junior boys taking 🥈 & girls 🥇, it was the turn of the seniors. We had 10 of us toeing the start line as the above LYG results were being announced!
Conditions were good – perfect temperature for running, the sun made a welcome appearance and the ground was generally firm with some light-ish mud in places, though it was very uneven / slightly treacherous underfoot.
As has become a feature of this season, our No1 man was Sam Parsons, another cracking run saw Sam clock 37.10 for the c.10.6k course leading our team home.
Jed Starvis (first year U20), in his senior mens debut ran brilliantly and with really mature pacing moving through the field to finish in 17th in 37:44 – an even more impressive run on the tough and long course given Jed was running U17 distances just last season.
Our third man was Kevin Fini in his first XC race of the season having been back in the States for the first two Kent Leagues, putting his marathon training to good use in a great run placing 25th in 38:21 – really strong and well-paced running – great to have Kev back!
I was our fourth scorer in 32nd in 38:42 – a solid effort though I lost a top 30 spot by getting sprinted past in the final few hundred meters.
Leon DeBruyn continuing his fine form was our fifth man home in 42nd in 39:18 with another well-paced run, showing his consistent training is paying off week by week.
Nick Clegg went out hot in the strength of his marathon training, but the illness that had laid him low all week and had almost ruled him out until the day before, took its toll on him in the second half of the punishing course. Nevertheless, he still finished 46th in 39:27 – an excellent run on his course debut.
Will Reedman-White has been an ever-present for us on the country this season and on his local (as in walking distance!) course he ran well and finished quickly in 64th place in 40:41.
Three of our Dads completed our team, with Jason Meers in 320th in 51:34, Barry Horgan a few places behind in 328th in 52:20 and Rob Whyte in 362nd in 53:58.
We won bronze 🥉 in the team event behind Heathside and Herne Hill – a brilliant result and the first senior men’s team medal for some time, certainly since I’ve been involved in the past 5 years.
Congrats and well done guys! A real achievement that shows we’re building well – we were also missing quite a few of our strong runners , so with them to come back in and with Jed being the first of last years U17 cohort who are used to winning to join us in the seniors, and the current U17s carrying all before them, and the U15s and U13s really strong, the future is bright – up the Heath!
