BRECON AC took two teams to the Welsh Athletics Cross Country Relays at Monmouth Showground last weekend.
At the lowest end of the age scale an inexperienced U13 boys team came away with a very credible fifth place out of the nine teams competing.
Tristan Tena Cumberland, the only one of the team at the lower end of the age group ran the opening leg and despite being dwarfed by some of the opposition he kept the team in touch with the leaders by nimbly covering the 1600m lap in 6mins 48. Rory Orton paced himself well on leg two and overtook three or four teams who were possibly hiding their weaker runners on the middle legs. Rory’s 6mins 25 was Brecon’s fastest leg and 13th out of the 37 competitors. Rory handed over to John Bennett who set out at a flying pace and looked to be trying to run down the leaders within half a lap.
Despite struggling slightly on the later uphill section John ran a fast 6 minutes 28 second leg to hand over to Isaac Pierce who ran another excellent leg and held his position despite coming under a lot of pressure at the end. All told, an excellent result from the Brecon boys. At the other end of the age scale (well almost!) Brecon fielded a masters team in the M45-54 category and despite all being over 50 they performed remarkably well. This race was mixed in with the senior men and the younger masters category of 35-44 so it was difficult to tell where the teams were placed until the official results came out. To make matters worse some clubs had teams in the 35-44 category but they included some 45+ athletes ‘running down’ an age group. Mike Pfeiffer, ‘fresh’ from his storming sub three hour Snowdonia marathon the previous weekend led the team off.
Although former Brecon youngster Tom Marshall shot away into the lead Mike was well up with the rest of the field in particular the masters.
Mike’s 12mins 29 for the 3.6k placed Brecon third in category but within 20 seconds of the leaders. Leg two saw things settle down a little and Charlie Northey took advantage of this and worked his way through a number of teams. Charlie’s 13mins 25 proved to be the fastest of the M45+ second leg runners. Third leg runner Peter Sowerby had also contested the Snowdonia marathon the week before and was less sure of his recovery. To his credit Pete ran a very solid leg with a 13mins 50 time but at this stage it was very difficult to know what position the team were in and the worst case scenario was 200m down on two teams who certainly looked fairly wrinkly.
Austin Davies making his first appearance of the winter the club legend made a relatively steady start but then started to reel in the opposition. With the deficit down to 100m at approximately half way Austin cranked things up in the second half, going ahead of the suspected rivals with 500m to go and opening up an impressive lead.
At the presentation afterwards Austin’s 12mins 01s announced as the fastest time of all M45-54’s and also beat the 35-44 category runners.
The worries about the opposition were unfounded – Brecon won by over 2 and a half minutes.
With 13 senior men teams, 12 35-44 teams, 10 45-54 teams and one 55-64, ‘our boys’ were a remarkable sixth.