Carly Audrit and Dawn Teed of Exmouth Harriers at the Northam Burrows cross country meeting

On Sunday eight Exmouth Harriers went cross county for cross country when they raced in the latest round of the Brooks Westward Cross Country League, writes Dave Eveleigh.

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The event took place at the uniquely punctuated location of Westward Ho! Conditions in one part of the course, on Northam Burrrows were too wet, even for cross country, so a shorter than planned loop of about a mile was used, the men repeating this five times, the women three.

The course was flat save for a handful of ditches to tackle on each lap, to be leapt in one or jumped into and climbed out of, according to the size of the ditch, level of fitness and of course age!

Carly Audrit and Dawn Teed represented Exmouth in the Women’s race, frustratingly short of a scoring team of three.

Audrit was 27th in a field of 46, and, with a time of 22:02 was just 12 seconds outside of a top half finish.

Teed looked comfortable in 32nd place in 24:05 and was third woman aged 45-49 as she begins to show the benefits of training for her second bash at the Falklands marathon in March.

Men’s club captain Adam Miller led the way in the male race where there were eighty-two finishers.

He was 22nd in 29:10 and now lies 12th overall in the open category.

Mark Cox is getting to grips with these sort of races now and was 29th, just over a minute behind Miller.

Having re-joined the club Dan Morley was 61st in 34:36. Dave Eveleigh was 75th in 38 minutes, and fifth man aged 55-59.

Running his first cross country for some years Kurt Margison certainly got stuck in, was 80th, seventh man aged 40-44 and recorded a time of 42:30.

Jim Wyatt was 81st, sixth man over 60 (though he is in fact over 70!)and was timed at 43:38.

When considering these positions it should be remembered that these events are contested, for the most part by hardened old school runners, and with not a tutu to be seen in the way of fancy dress.