So successful have the events at Mill Lane in Hurst Green been since Holland Sports agreed to host a cross-country fixture for the first time around the playing fields and backfields in 2023, that even though Holland Sports have now risen out of these divisions, the clubs within them still wanted to host a cross-country using the clubhouse and venue as a base. And so it was, that even though the fifty or so members of the junior and senior squad were competing at Beckenham Place Park on the Saturday afternoon, members of the team were busy on the Friday evening and Saturday morning beforehand, setting up the course and the clubhouse ready to welcome 1000 athletes back to Holland Sports for the second time in just over a month.

Well done Neil Danby for leading the team of volunteers from Holland Sports to help set up the course and Paul Kavanagh for leading the team from the Sports and Social Association so that the welcome mat was laid out at the clubhouse for our visitors. Well done to the team of volunteers from Fulham Tri and 26.2 Running Club for aiding in this process and then marshalling the event and helping to pack it all away at the end of the afternoon whilst the Holland Sports’ squad were away in Beckenham.

The beauty of cross-country is that the same course can run very differently. Gone are the carbon plate road shoes that took the runners of Division 1 around the course on a balmy afternoon on October 11th. After a few weeks of rain, much of the course was muddy, slippery and needed spikes or trail shoes to negotiate. Check out the video below (beware there is one swear word) that shows what its like to come 105th in the Division 3 and 4 race at Hurst Green in mid-November (everyone is still moving very, very quickly) and compare it to the near-perfect conditions a month earlier: it’s very, very different. Well done to Wimbledon Windmiler (and Holland Sports’ 2nd claimer) Sam Walker, who was in the lead pack all the way through the race, eventually ending up in third place.