ATHLETICS

WOODFORD Green Athletic Club with Essex Ladies runners performed with credit at events around the country on Saturday.

At Wollaton Park, Nottingham, five senior men, two U17 men and two women from the club represented their counties at the Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships, incorporating the trials for the World Championships in Edinburgh in two weeks' time.

Dave Wardle and Linzi Snow took podium places in the team competition, for North-East Counties and Essex respectively.

The Wollaton Park course was unusually firm, which suited Wardle.

After the initial uphill followed by a mighty downhill dash, he worked through into a position of around 20th which he maintained throughout the race before crossing the line 23rd.

Snow has turned out for all the big races this winter, and her performance in finishing 43rd was as good as any of them.

She finished 2mins 36secs down on winner Laura Kenney, but was fifth counter as Essex women took silver.

Ronnie Sparke had another superb run finishing sixth out of 258 finishers in the men's U17 race, with Alex Cornwell in 38th.

Both scored for Essex, which came fourth out of 39 teams.

Woodford also had four men at the Bath Half-Marathon - Ewen Mallock, Bertie Powell, Alex Chklar and Trevor Powell.

Mallock clocked 68mins 31secs for ninth place and Bertie Powell 68mins 51secs for tenth. Trevor Powell knocked two minutes off his 2007 Bath time, as he recorded 97mins 7secs.