A PLEASANT day ‘near’ the beach at Pembrey Park resulted in Brecon AC’s cross country athletes bringing back some medals and a lot of good race performances from the Welsh Championships.

The first race of the day proved to be a happy hunting ground as a depleted U13 boys team missing arguably three of the four strongest runners in the club still managed to force their way into second place after a very tight battle.

Jack Organ was again the team leader with a solid fifth place performance.

Owen Price-Davies was able to extend his already long stride on the flat and generally firm course and he cantered home in 16th. In 19th and 20th were the two year 7’s Ellis Morgan and Joe Murphy, who had spurred each other on all of the way around.

The team scores were tied for silver at 60 points each with Newport but here was where the Brecon AC non-scorers made a crucial difference. Iolo Pierce (26th), Cian Aplin (28th) and Dan Ricketts (34th) all ran their hearts and beat the Newport fourth scorer meaning that Brecon won the ‘tie’ on countback.

Had any one of these lads finished one place lower that would not have been the case.

Unfortunately there were just three U13G so team medals were not possible. However, the happy trio of Freya Platt (41st), Ava Nicholl (42nd) and Martha Eacock (47th) not just ran well but seemed to enjoy the experience of their first Welsh Championships.

Team medals went begging in the U15 boys event as only two clubs could field full teams, neither of which was called Brecon AC. With three boys competing and doing well it was a case of ‘oh so close’ and silver may well have been within reach with a strong turnout.

Rugby specialist Iwan Coyle trailed cyclist Spencer Davies for much of the race but a strong finish saw him just edge ahead into 11th place with ‘Spence’ just one second and one place behind. Isaac Pierce, a year younger, was 28th of the 35 finishers.

Tiegan Ward was the sole Brecon Blue in a field of 37 U17 and U20 athletes.

It wasn’t Tiegan’s best race of the winter but 16th in the race and 11th U20 was very respectable in what is often an unpredictable age group.

In the middle of the day there were two open races for primary school pupils and the first of these produced a first victory of the day for the club.

Ruby Herdman ran her usual committed race and was well placed for a silver medal a little over 10m behind her regular rival from Swansea with less than 100m to go. Ruby had other ideas though and stormed past the leader and across the line to gain a significant victory. Charlotte Lewis ran very well for 22nd place and Amelie Murphy showed great determination as she came home in 44th.

U11 boys Joe Edwards and Will Herdman toed the line in the equivalent boys race and again showed great commitment and determination. Joe came home strongly and placed 18th with Will in 39th out of 50 finishers.

The Price-Davies brothers Brychan and Evan lined up in a disappointingly small U20 mens race. After a relatively pedestrian start the race began to hot up in the second half.

Brychan was able to go with the pace initially but only to a point but pleasingly he was running at a relatively steady speed as he came in fifth a lot closer to his rivals than other recent races.

Evan, who prefers fell running ran consistently and was pleased with his ninth place finish again closer to the front than on other occasions.

105 athletes toed the line for the combined U23, senior women and master women’s race. While there was excitement at the front there were many sub plots happening all the way through the field as athletes swapped places.

Just three Brecon competitors – Megan Tucker, still really an U20, was well up the field in 32nd and was just outside the medals as the 4th U23 finisher.

F50 Bev Tucker in 83rd and F45 Kathryn Powell in 86th were also both well up in their age groups but just outside the medals on this occasion. 131 finished the race.

Finally the senior mens race got underway and over 160 started the 10.3k three lap challenge.

The standard at the front end was excellent with regular GB endurance international Dewi Griffiths winning by a comfortable margin ahead of commonwealth games steeplechaser Ieuan Thomas.

Brecon’s first finisher was once again the old master Austin davies who, despite it being a fast flat course, floated around the course and finished in 27th place.

Although five minutes down on the leaders Austin, now 54, has had a minimal winters training and still won the M50 title by a 20 second margin.

Just three places behind Austin was the youthful Michael Holloway who enjoyed one of his best performances this year.

Robin Woods in 40th was the fifth M40 to finish and his performance belied his long standing injury problem.

A couple of minutes further back in 61st was another senior Gareth Lawrence continuing his excellent season despite currently doing a lot of preparation for an upcoming biathlon.

Peter Sowerby led home the M55 team by finishing 80th and was seventh M55 for his efforts. Mark Roberts was next home in 115th and Derek Osborne (137th) made up the team with only three to score in this age group.

Having seen the youngsters take home silver in the first race the oldies matched this and showed that a championship medal is equally well received whatever the age.