12 ATHLETES from Carmarthen made the long journey up to the Midlands to Cofton Park in Birmingham as part of the West Wales Regional team, where hundreds of the top athletes and champions in the United Kingdom competed in the UK Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships.
The runners performed well and were able to test themselves and gain experience against the best Britain has to offer in cross country running with well over 200 finishers in each of the 10 races on the programme. West Wales’ teams finished high up in the junior age groups.
In the boys age groups there were 2 athletes in each – Iwan Glynn was the first home in 47th in the under 13 boys followed by Liam Edwards in 203rd. The under 15’s saw Ben Thomas cross the line in 87th with Tomos Rees 183rd, whilst in the first race of the day, under 20 men Ryan Jenkins and Sion Lewis came in 28th and 99th respectively.
The largest number of club representatives were in the under 13 girls – leading the way was Phoebe Davis in 81st and scoring valuable points for the West region were Siwan Jones-Evans in 227th and Maddie Morgan 249th. In the older girls age groups, Non Morgan was 277th in the under 15 girls and Sioned Glynn in 112th in the under 17 women. Ellie Kiff was also in the team.
West Wales did get a race winner on the day in the senior men’s race thanks to Swansea Harrier Dewi Griffiths. Dewi fought well with the leading pack throughout and was able to pull away near the end to win by 6 seconds. Dewi now moves on to the World Half Marathon in Cardiff in a few weeks.
Local talent was out on display Thursday Evening in Carmarthen, where the 2016 Dyfed Primary Schools XC Champs took place; you can read about that in next week’s edition of The Herald.
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