Met League, Alexandra Palace, 21 December 2013
27 Senior Men from Hillingdon AC braved the testing Alexandra Palace course in wet and windy conditions at the third Metropolitan League fixture of the season. With fewer Hillingdon athletes competing compared with the previous Met League race at Stevenage, the club had a mixed result, with the A team finishing eighth in Division One with their highest points total of the season so far of 561 but the B team recording their worst performance of the season, finishing eighth in Division Three. Overall the A team now sit eighth in Division One and have distanced themselves from TVH in the battle to avoid relegation whilst the B team have slipped to fourth overall in Division Three.
Individually, Robert Thompson was first scorer for the club in 22nd position with James Laing second scorer in 36th and Joe Saissi third scorer in 87th. Behind Joe, the result of the A team owed a lot to the performances of the remaining scorers who all recorded higher finishing positions compared to their previous Met League performance of the season with the most striking of these being Mike Dooley (97th), Alex Ozdemir (185th) and Dominic Speight (190th). The A team was completed by Paul Leppard in 219th place.
Steve Hirons (249th) was the first scorer for the B team and there was an improved performance from Jeremy Collis (308th compared to 336th at Stevenage) and a Met League debut for William Morris (328th). The B team was completed by Bob Burton in 357th place with 408 finishers overall.
Hannah Wells ran her best race ever in the Met League finishing an impressive 29th place ahead of at least seven of her expected rivals from other clubs overtaken on the last hill, and was lead Hillingdon runner reports Lesley Conway. She was astounded at her performance, and put it down to the rest she had having been ill recently although everyone knows she has been improving steadily through the season coming closer to her speedy teammate Eva Mack (absent on this occasion).
Full results may be found here
