Back in 2014 (I think) was last time Sarum fielded a CST team at Long Valley, when we competed in the CST Final, coming third – winning several large green umbrellas.
This time round a blessed dry interval meant that the Compass Sport Cup and Trophy regional qualifying heat at Long Valley was run in a dry morning, before the downpours returned. Even though the previous week had been a little less damp there were significant wet areas, especially on the many tank tracks, but then it always seems like that at Long Valley. The Long Valley map is dominated by the track system which can be a lttle difficult to interpret on the ground. In addition, the going cross country is not exactly fast open forest – making this a challenging area.
This year we were competing in the regional qualifying Heat. We had chosen to run at Long Valley as being the closest qualifying heat venue so there was strong competition in the Trophy races between seven smaller clubs. This was an opportunity for us to show off our brand-new club Banner, which fluttered proudly in the strong winds. We also have new Start and Finish banners which will be on show at our next event on March 9th, the Sarum Saunter at Great Ridge, where we will be hosting the Southern Championships.
No less than 32 Sarum runners turned out at Long Valley with highly competitive runs contributing to our Club coming home a close third (by just 2 points) behind Mole Valley and 24 behind winners SOC. Being in the top 3 qualified Sarum for the Final. The scores that gave us this result are below. Of course, everyone who ran contributed by ensuring we had sufficient entries across most classes for us to score well. All who turned out, including non-competitive runners and supporters, can feel proud of their contribution. Big congratulations to Elara Jacobs for getting a perfect 100 score and to Des Dickenson, Paul Lane and Michael Cooke who each ran up a class and achieved high scores and also to the rest of our fantastic high scorers. Full results can be found here.
| NAME | CLASS | SCORE |
| Elara Jacobs | 9B | 100 |
| Desmond Dickinson | 1 | 99 |
| Marc Balston | 4 | 99 |
| Kerry Corkery | 5 | 99 |
| Andrew Graham | 7 | 99 |
| Elizabeth Balston | 8B | 98 |
| Lisa White | 3 | 97 |
| Michael Cooke | 2 | 96 |
| Paul Lane | 4 | 96 |
| Ian Peirce | 10 | 96 |
| Mark White | 6 | 96 |
| Neal Jacobs | 2 | 94 |
| Jeff Butt | 6 | 94 |
The Compass Sport Cup Final will be run at South Gare close to Redcar, Cleveland on Sunday September 14th. South Gare is an area of reclaimed land and breakwater on the southern side of the mouth of the River Tees. It is about 300 miles from Salisbury so please start planning your calendar now.
Redcar was a major steel town for 170 years and home to a major blast furnace the closure of which in 2015 resulted in 2000 jobs being lost. These days Redcar, home to one of the longest unbroken beaches in the UK with a nationally famous ice cream treat, the Lemon Top, is a vibrant historic market town with mediaeval priory and one of Britain’s few remaining pleasure piers. It has some of the best surfing to be found in the North, so pack those surf boards.
