Athletes from the Endurance Performance Centre (EPC) at St Mary’s University, Twickenham produced some superb results at the British Universities & Colleges (BUCS) Cross Country Championships that took place at Holyrood Park in Edinburgh last Saturday.
In the Women’s long course race Anna Møller retained her BUCS Cross Country 2019 title to take Gold while Izzy Fry finished in 6th place to give the St Mary’s women’s team second place overall, improving on last year’s third place performance.
The result continues Anna’s string of recent successes as she retained her European U23 Cross Country title in December having also won the 3000m Steeplechase and 5000m titles that she won on the track at the European U23 Championships in July.
In the Men’s short course race a St Mary’s athlete won for the sixth consecutive year with Joe Wigfield and Alex Ediker finishing in 1st and 2nd places respectively. The team finished 2nd overall losing narrowly on countback, with St Mary’s teams accounting for five of the top twenty places.
The Men’s long course race saw Daniel Jarvis finish 4th and Abdulqani Sharif 7th to ensure that the St Mary’s men’s team finished 1st overall retaining the title for the fourth consecutive year.
Other notable performances included Nick Goolab winning in a new course record of 29.01 and Ben Bradley placing 2nd and achieving a personal best time of 29.11, at the Chichester 10K.
While St Mary’s athletes were running well at outdoors events, St Mary’s alumna and EPC athlete Adelle Tracey was competing at an Indoors 800m race in Glasgow, achieving a personal best time of 2:00:23, which put Adelle 7th on the all-time indoor 800m UK rankings.
Head of Sport at St Mary’s Andrew Reid-Smith said, “For our athletes to run so well over varying distances both indoors and outdoors shows the exciting talent that is coming through the St Mary’s Endurance Performance Centre.”
EPC Coaches Mick Woods and Craig Winrow were delighted with the results with Craig noting, “This was a great weekend for all the athletes and the athletics programme at St Mary’s.”