Mon - 25/03/19

I did the WMACi cross country. It was a touch course and was full distance this year. Alan Newman ran well as did Andrew Murray I was third Brit and we got team silver. Here's what I said to Keith about my race predictions for the cross country and the half marathon...

The Finn who was DQed (in the cross country) was disqualified for not wearing his country’s official masters athletics vest.   

We had an M55 runner in the cross country who was disqualified for only wearing one number. Runners are supposed to wear numbers front and back and are also given a third number as a bag label. This particular Brit in his first international outing received three numbers and as he is running in three races he assumed that there was one number for each race. Oops! He finished as one of the first three Brits and would have scored well for the team. His mistake cost the M55 team the team gold medal. Did he read Maurice’s missives I wonder?

I usually do some research to get an idea of what might happen. I’ve attached my predictions (in team order) for the cross country and the half marathon. The scoring is done on time aggregate of the first three runners. In the cross country Italy would have had a strong team but they had a no show which scuppered their chances. Germany with two no shows were nowhere near as strong as their registration times suggested. Romania were not as strong as I thought they might be either.

There are rules for forming teams when there is no natural team of three in an age group. It is not always easy to work out which country will choose to form a composite team. There are no team awards in the 10K road race by the way. In the half marathon  I hope that Archie will drop Geoffrey Newton down to our age group. Although Geoff is grumbling about injury at the moment he would be a valuable addition to our journeyman team and once again we would have a chance of a team medal. I notice Boris Bansemer, an allegedly fast German cross country runner, was a DNS at that event. He is also entered for the half marathon. Two other “fast” Germans were not as fast as they thought they might be.