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| Samantha Alvarez from Hailsham (pictured) opened the racing at Sussex Masters Cross-country Championships at Denne Park, Horsham on Sunday with a convincing victory in the Women’s O35 3.2km race.
The fog that was forecast to engulf Mid Sussex for most of the day luckily disappeared early and the runners were able to enjoy a bright crisp day with the going getting softer by the minute as the sun swept across the sky but there were large areas of hardened frost
where the sun did not reach. Generally conditions were good for racing.
Reigning champion Julie Briggs from Arena 80 is injured and failed to reach the starting line but this was going to be Samantha’s day.
Although Steyning’s Camilla Neale put up a good fight during the early part of the race the Hailsham runner, who was runner up last year, pulled well clear to win in 26:33 to Camilla’s 27:11 and Arena 80’s Jo Farrow who clocked 28:05.
Arena 80’s Clare Aqualina filled fourth place but she was the first Over 45 runner and F45s filled the next three places overall with Steyning’s Joan Lennon clocking 28:22, super Vet Chris Naylor (Arena 80) who is actually now in the F50 age group taking the bronze medal in 29:07.
Steyning took the Over 35 team title while Arena 80 took the Over 45 team event.
In the Men’s races John Lowden, now wearing the Brighton & Hove colours retained his Over 50 9.4km title with a two-minute victory over club mate and former winner Peter Witcomb with 38:46 to 40:46 with Crawley’s Tony Lintern coming through strongly at the finish to take third place in 40:55.
Crawley narrowly took the team title.
Dave Barry, now with Worthing Striders, is certainly showing great form at the moment and he split the first two clocking 40:15 to finish more than one minute clear of Crawley’s Dave Beattie, 41:21 with Bill Mullett from Lewes taking third place in 42:07.
Although both the Phoenix and Crawley totalled 18 points it was Phoenix who took the title as their third scorer finished one place ahead of the third Crawley runner.
In the Over 40 men’s race (pictured) Brighton & Hove’s Keith Newton notched up his fifth successive victory in the Sussex Over 40 championships with the the biggest margin of the day. Keith finished 2m.13s. clear of Dean Angel (Horsham Joggers) in 34:45 after leading from start to finish.
Paul Froud (Brighton & Hove) ran a well paced race to pull clear of the main chasing group over the last of the four laps to take third place in 37:08 and help his team to victory.
It was fair shares in the team events with all titles going to different Clubs.
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