National Pride for Birtley AC

Chris Perkins, Photo by Steve Haywood

This weekend saw the National XC Champs which were held at Nottingham, where the recent (and current!) storms conspired to make conditions for both spectators and athletes as difficult as possible! The journey there was not helped by bad weather on the day, and because of the state of the ground, there were some last minute changes to parking which caused huge issues with traffic, resulting in young athletes jumping out of cars in queues of traffic to make it to their race on time. 
However, this was, by all accounts, an absolutely amazing cross-country course, with tree trunk obstacles, small lakes (judging by the photos anyway!) and enough mud to keep a whole farmyard of pigs happy.  I think this photo of Robbie Mumford (below) sums up the amount of mud and water on the course perfectly - thanks to Steve Haywood for braving the conditions to take some amazing photos (full album can be seen on FB  here)
​The sixteen Birtley athletes who tackled the course on Saturday all deserve medals in my opinion, but of course, being a National Championship, they were hard to come by - huge kudos then to Chris Perkins who was up against some very stiff competition, yet came away with a bronze medal, one of only two medals for the North East - well done Chris!
Full results HERE

Photo by Steve Haywood