{"id":425,"date":"2013-03-19T22:23:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T22:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/?p=425"},"modified":"2013-03-19T22:23:20","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T22:23:20","slug":"holly-hayes-xc-race-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/?p=425","title":{"rendered":"Holly Hayes XC Race Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tThe final race of the Derby Runner XC series was held at Holly Hayes, Whitwick. It was a<!--more--> clear morning as the regular mud runners started\u00a0to assemble at Greenbank. By 9:30am there were six of us, not enough for a scoring team leaving the gates open for our neighbours Ivanhoe\u00a0to possibly overtake us in the league standings. Speculation grew in the cars on possible members going straight to the event and where\u00a0we might finish in the league. We had been steadily improving through the season which had been a tough one. From the mixed conditions\u00a0of frozen ground and ankle deep mud of Bagworth Heath, the driving rain and muddy banks of Foremark and the surprise gem of the season<br \/>\nFosse Meadows with its memorable water crossings, people losing their trainers in the deep mud.<br \/>\nAs we pulled up, there was Malcolm carrying the South Derbyshire flag, that\u2019s 7. One more and we have a team. \u2018There\u2019s Colin Mee, over\u00a0there\u2019, Gav pointed across the car park. Great a team we had and the rest was down to us. The course was short at 4.5 miles mainly in\u00a0woodland, conditions were kind underfoot, one gradual climb and a couple of shallow water crossings. The pace was quick from the start\u00a0and Chris Gunstone and Colin Mee were away leading Road Runners charge. The regular inter club rivalry and positional battles helped improve the clubs position overall we discovered when we had all finished.<br \/>\nChris was first to cross the line in 63rd place only 2\u00a0seconds in front of Colin, their close run battles will no doubt continue into the road running series. Then came Andy Orme, another\u00a0solid performance working his way up through the field to take 99th. Gavin Horton finished 110th, improving on his previous race position\u00a0by 6 and closing the gap on Andy.<br \/>\nWith half of our runners now finished all they could do was watch and wait. Luckily that wasn\u2019t for\u00a0very long as in came Adrian Middleton in 129th and Steve Fowler 130th both with season best positions and improving by over 10 places each\u00a0on the previous race. Malcolm Moore closely followed in 136th despite feeling a little under the weather. All three were physically\u00a0exhausted, gasping for breath, clutching their race tags, looking down the final 150m up hill sprint to the finish line for the last South\u00a0Derbyshire vest.<br \/>\nThere it was worn by Tony Phillips and crossing the line in 159th well done, all our team over the line. When the\u00a0results came through we had done enough, South Derbyshire finished 5th in League 2, ahead of Ivanhoe by 8 points and only 4 points behind\u00a0Huncote.<br \/>\nThanks to all that took part this season, many memories shared by all. We look forward to the 2013\/14 season and if you would like to try\u00a0the XC races expect them to start around November..\u2026.just in time for the mud!<br \/>\n<em>Contributed by Adrian Middleton<\/em>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The final race of the Derby Runner XC series was held at Holly Hayes, Whitwick. It was a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-race-reports","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdrr.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}