Profitable day’s work for county in Nottingham

Hallamshire’s Andy Heyes finished third, and Leeds City took team bronze.

Heyes, 23, undoubtedy had his best run over the country, finishing behind Steve Vernon (Stockport) and Richard Goodman (Shaftsbury Barnet). An Oxford graduate, Heyes finished a Masters degree at Tulsa, USA, in November.

On his return to the UK he soon demonstrated his class by winning the Yorkshire Cross-Country title by a big margin in early January.

Since then he has had a short course cross-country in Edinburgh and a couple of indoor 3,000m races, none of which indicated the sort of form that he displayed at Nottingham where he was leading the field on the second lap.

He now has a perfect springboard to launch an attack on his personal best times on the track when he expects to concentrate on the 1,500m.

Leeds City’s James Wilkinson showed he is back in contention with the leaders after injury delayed the start of his winter season with an excellent fifth, maintaining a fine record in this event, and Jonny Brownlee (Bingley) also gave a top-class performance to finish ninth, his best performance over the country.

Leeds City were beaten by Bedford and, by just five points, by Notts AC, maintaining a marvellous record of being medallists for 12 successive years.

Following Wilkinson they had Carl Smith (35th), Simon Deakin (44th), James Walsh (63rd), Alan Buckley (64th) and Dominic Easter (90th).

Deakin has remarkably been a counter in all 12 medal-winning teams.

As consolation, Leeds won the trophy for the best team with nine to count, Adam Osborne (109th), Jack Simpson (117th) and Mike Burrett (118th) playing their part in a field of 1,650 runners.

The women’s race was won by Charnwood’s Gemma Steel.

Holmfirth’s Katie Walshaw could not reproduce her Northern-winning run but she did well to finish ninth, her best position in the race.

There were well-deserved bronze team medals for Rotherham, splendidly led by Sam Johnson in 23rd place. Close behind came Laura Spence (29th), Steph Burns (31st) with Robyn Lanceley completing the count in 44th place. For good measure they also had Annabelle Grady home in 49th.