THE Oxford Series XC in Banbury was cancelled over the weekend so a few CAC members took the opportunity to run in the Gloucester Series races held a Blackbridge.

CIRENCESTER AC and TRIATHLON CLUB

This cross-country series doesn’t have a huge turnout but, nonetheless, there is a lot of strong competition.

The highest finisher of the day was Matt Crew who finished second in the U17s in a time of 17.26. Matt, who had a strong road-race season last year, is continuing to work on his XC skills and was just eight seconds behind the winner, Jack Turner of Stroud and District AC; six finished.

Meanwhile, brother Simon Crew ran in the U13s and as one of the younger runners finished tenth out of 15.

In the Senior Men’s race, newly qualified club coach Mark Sysum ran well to finish 33rd out of a field of 70. Dorian Matts, who represents the club regularly at XC, came in 61st and third MV50.

Finally, Barbara Thomas after completing her 100 races in 2013 ran this cross country and it was her second race of the day. She finished in 20th in the senior ladies' race for which 29 competed.

In appalling wet conditions on Saturday morning at the Swindon 5km Parkrun, Barbara came in 96th out of 193, taking it easy in a time of 27.57.

That was still good enough to give her 1st FV55. It would appear from this Saturday’s events that Barbara is again planning to run a lot of races in 2014.