Chiltern Harriers continued their rise up the Chiltern League table this weekend. They moved up one place to fifth of the fourteen teams in the first division table by competing in the third leg of the five-race Chiltern League tournament. The event was held last Saturday, the 4th of December, at Stockwood Park, Luton and was a ' mob-match', which means both first and second divisions ran together in the same race. Each runner earns points equal to the number of runners in their division that they beat, but only the points of the first ten finishers in each club count. Chiltern Harriers are in the first division. With two races to go, Milton Keynes lead the table with Windsor, Slough, Eton and Hounslow not far behind.
Andrew Gardiner, who won the last race at Oxford Horspath, was only able to find fourth place in this race, which was a bigger and clearly faster field. N. Burton of Dacorum was the winner and P. Wicks of Windsor, S,E & H was second. Kingsley Nanton was first Chiltern Harrier home, continuing his excellent form for Chiltern by finishing in 17th place over-all. Derek Brown was a minute behind him but was first veteran (40 years and over) finisher, winning the vets race for Chiltern. The young runner Stuart Ellerby, who is still 4 years short of his 20th birthday, was also in excellent form and finished as 9th in the under 20s race and 40th place over-all.
Chiltern Harriers ladies also ran well, and the team of four finished fourth over-all. All four in the team finished quite close together. Rhona MacDonald was first home in 19th place at 26m:11s, then Laura Butt, 22nd in 26m:22s, Cath Holloway 23rd in 26m:33s and Claire Stubbings, 38th in 29m:36s.
There are two races are left to run. The next is at Watford on 8th January. It remains to be seen whether Chiltern can maintain their upward mobility and move up to fourth place, currently occupied by Vale of Aylesbury 100 points ahead of them.