North London Cross Country Champions

HAC’s winning ways continued on Saturday at the North London Cross Country Championship.

With six to score in the men’s race things were looking good after the opening lap as the trio of Mohamed Daud Mohamed, Rob Thompson and Mohamed Mohamed working together had broken free from the field with Aramias Zeration in 5th and Fahad Abdi 7th.

Serpentine had a very strong team out so the 6th place runner was always going to be vital and after that 1st lap it was little Abdi in around 35th position.

Lap two saw the same trio leading but with Serpentine’s Jonathan Poole, winner of this years Ealing and Hillingdon half marathons, as well as the last three Finchley 20’s, closing the gap.

Changes further down the field meant that our 6th place runner was now Steve Hirons, closely followed by Scott Farley and Abdi.

Mohamed Daud Mohamed broke clear of Rob on the final hill to take the individual victory and a sprint finish from Poole just denied HAC a 123.

With Scott coming through to overtake Steve on the final lap the six scorers for HAC were Mohamed Daud Mohamed (1st), Rob Thompson (2nd), Mohamed Mohamed (4th), Aramias Zeration (6th), Fahad Abdi (16th) and Scott Farley (43rd) which was good enough to win the team title from Serpentine by just 4 points.

Rob won’t be needing to lift weights for a while after being the nominated trophy holder for all of the victory photos- it really is a huge trophy and hopefully one which we can defend next year when we host the event.

No silverware in the ladies race but there were some fine performances from our 11 athletes with Lorraine McNulty first home for HAC followed by Kathy Carruthers and Karen O’Rourke with Debbie Brown making up the scoring team.