Stockport Harriers Primary School Cross Countries 2015/16 - Race 2

The group had it's highest number of runners at last weekend's Primary School Cross Country event at Woodbank Park, which I am very pleased about. 15 of our group were out there representing their 8 schools proudly. Lets have even more runners racing next time, for all the right reasons. The bottom line is that a continuous runs over an appropriate distance is a healthy activity for a Saturday morning.

From a performance point of view, I have to remind everyone that there are many variables that determine an athlete's position/time in any one particular race - weather conditions, underfoot conditions, number of athletes, quality of the field, age distribution, athletes wellbeing on the day ..............etc etc A lot of these variables become even more pronounced with Cross Country races, as opposed to track outdoor and even more so indoor races, for obvious reasons.

We therefore need to be careful with comparisons and explain to young athletes that a worse position/time does not necessarily mean that they are not progressing. A very simple example is underfoot conditions. I can assure you all times will be worse in a bog than if the children are running on dry, hard ground.

So with the above in mind I will highlight a few performances that I feel need to be mentioned, but I do think all 15 runners did their very best on the day considering the conditions and how they were feeling on the day. That is all that really matters with regard to their long term athlete development.

On the day and under those conditions:

- Alex, Natalia, Jack, Ted, Jonah, Daniel, Davey and Tom were all able to achieve PBs over the course.

- Jack, Jonah and Daniel all achieved their best positions this year at this particular event.

- Congratulations to Alexa, Oliver and William B for competing in the event for the very first time. They are all year 3s running against year 4s so their finishing positions are very impressive.

- Congratulations to Alexa(6th) and Jonah(3rd) for achieving their top 10 certificates.

I've attached the results below and look forward to the next race. If anyone has any photo's of the event that they would like to submit, please do so.

http://stockportharriers.co.uk/files/docs/shac_schools_xc15_race2.html