English Cross Country Championships
Donington Park, Leicestershire
Saturday 27th February 2016
The 2016 English Cross Country Championships were staged in Donington Park Leicestershire on Saturday 27th of February. This was the first time the championships had been held at Donington Park since 1986 when the women’s event was staged there. The men’s and women’s championships are now held as a joint event, and 2016 represented the 129th staging of the men’s championships and 84th for the women. The race started and finished in the park, and in order to add some sharp hills the course went onto adjacent farmland, and crossed over into Derbyshire.
There was a big entry for the championships, with a total of 5034 runners taking part in the races. All age groups were represented starting with the under 13 boys and girls, and going through all of the age ranges up to senior men and women.
Two Kingston athletes represented the club in the senior men’s twelve kilometres race, where 1730 runners lined up at the start line to await the gun.
Gregan Clarkson is Kingston’s most experienced distance runner, the former two time world Biathle champion is also a fierce competitor and these championships were his 12th competitive run of this year, which has already brought him his second consecutive Humberside title.
Gregan completed the course in a time of 48:59s and crossed the finishing line in 215th place, well inside the top 15% of finishers.
Loughborough University student Oliver Newton had his fourth outing of 2016 at Donington Park and was looking to follow up solid runs at both January’s Northern Championships and the BUCS Championships earlier this month.
He covered the course in a recorded time of 50:00s and crossed the finishing line in 270th place, finishing well inside the top 20% of runners.
Baldvin Magnusson and Jack Brothwell, two of Kingston’s youth athletes from the middle distance and distance training group made their way down to Leicestershire for the event, where they ran in the under 17 men’s six kilometres race, which had a field of 243 athletes.
This was Baldvin Magnusson’s second competitive outing of 2016, following his excellent 23rd place at January’s Northern Championship’s in Witton Park, Blackburn.
He put on another terrific display over the Donington Park course, where he crossed the finishing line in a time of 20:46s, to give him a 24th place finish at the National Championships.
Jack Brothwell was running in his third cross country event this year, he won the Humberside Championship title in January, and followed this up with a good run in the Northern Championship’s meeting at the end of that month.
Another good run saw him finish well within the top half of the race in Donington park, where he covered the course in a time of 22:15s.
