Northern Athletics 10 Mile Road Championship 2024
Report by Ken Smith
This year, the 10 Mile Championship returned to the ever-popular Brampton to Carlise race held on Sunday 17th November.
Over 1,000 entries were taken with the vast majority of these lined up at Brampton for the 10:00 start. The course quickly joins the main road to Carlisle before finishing alongside the Sands Leisure centre in Carlisle.
In the men’s race it quickly became a Morpeth pack run at the front, with 5 out of the top 7 finishers all wearing that famous blue Morpeth vest.
Carl Avery and his teammate Lawerence McCourt spearheaded the Morpeth vests as they quickly opened up a small gap on 3rd and 4th with a further 3 of their teammates in positions 5.6. & 7. As they raced down the hill towards the bridge in Carlisle, that hosts the finishing line, Carl Avery had opened up a gap of some 10 to 12 seconds over Lawerence who had a cushion of 10 seconds over 3rd place. The 3 other Morpeth athletes remained in the same positions, but with gaps now emerging between the three of them.
With the first three individuals now decided, the interest now moved to the team in 2nd and 3rd as Morpeth with 1st, 2nd and 5th had clearly won the N.A. Team medals.
Although Leeds City had a 10th place finisher there were no other Leeds men that close to the front. The host club Border did however have finishers in 9th and 11th position, but where was their 3rd counter.? Well fortunately he was not far back in 17th place to give Border the silver N.A. team medals with 37 points.
The bronze N.A. team medals were a while in being decided with those Red vests of North Shields Polytechnic Club, finally clinching those medals with their last counter finishing in 69th position to give them 128 points, with 4th placed team Tyne Bridge Harriers just 11 points behind.
In the women’s race the winner, Steph Pennycook, was never headed and finished some 81 seconds ahead of 2nd placed athlete, Rachel Brown. Rachel a Border Harrier, was 2 minutes behind 2nd place, but the Scottish athlete in 2nd place did not qualify for the Norther Athletics championships so Rachel picked up the Silver N.A medal with Tyne Bridge’s Helen Warburton some 7 seconds behind collecting the Bronze N.A. individual medal.
The Team medals were again mainly concerned with the silver and bronze ones as Border Harriers in 3rd, 5th and 7 th position clearly were the winning team. Just behind Border were Tyne Bridge Harriers. Their first two finishers were in 4th and 11th positions but the final counter was 32nd giving them 47 points, which was sufficient to give them that silver team medal and with Heaton Harriers only 9 points behind then taking the Bronze medal. Morpeth were 4th team on 79 points.
Results
Men
1 Carl Avery Morpeth 48:42
2 Lawrence McCourt Morpeth 48:54
3 Alex Brown Morpeth 50:05
4 Phillip Winkler Morpeth 50:28
Teams
1 Morpeth Carl Avery, Lawrence McCourt, Alex Brown 8 points
2 Border Harriers Nathan Postill, Tom Humphries, Adrian Holliday 37 points
3 North Shields Poly James Anderson, Matthew Moran, Jonathon Malley 128 points
Women.
1 Steph Pennycook Leeds City 54:34
2 Rachel Brown Border Harriers 58.04
3 Helen Warburton Tyne Bridge Harriers 58.58
4 Cloe Kendal Border Harriers 59.05
Teams
1 Border Harriers Rachel Brown, Chloe Kendal, Sally Addison 15 points
2 Tyne Bridge Harriers Helen Warburton, Rebecca Blain, Zoe Thompson 47 points
3 Heaton Harriers Jo Woodcock, Ellie Read, Rachel Barnes 56 points
Photos thanks to Eileen Ingham:
