KFL 2015/16 Match 4 - Oxleas Woods

Having won the first race in Knole Park and come second in the second race at Swanley, Sevenoaks AC athlete James Mason was again the winner in the fourth race of the Kent Fitness League series at Oxleas Woods, Eltham on Sunday 29 November.

On a 2 lap, 5.5 mile, muddy course, which is reckoned to be the toughest of the seven race series even without the high winds on the day, Mason led home a 27-strong Sevenoaks AC team in a field of over 400 runners from Kent running clubs.

At Swanley, Mason had allowed one of his rivals to get a few too many metres ahead before the final sprint, but there was no mistake this time as the 32-year-old Otford resident pulled clear to win by 150 metres.

Both the Sevenoaks men and women were missing some of their fastest runners on the day, but there were still some excellent scoring performances with two of the older members helping the team scores. James Graham, who is the leading M60 in the series, provided one of the the club's M50 scores, while Sally Shewell, who is second W55 in the standings, contributed the club's senior woman's score.

Once again, Cath Linney led the Sevenoaks women's team home and provided the W45 score, while W50 Pauline Dalton provided the W35 score to keep Sevenoaks AC in the top five women's teams after four races.

In the men's section, Chris Desmond was Sevenoaks' second scorer and provided the other M50 score, followed by Andy Ashlee, who was the club's M40 scorer, Andrew Mead, Joe Parsons and Dan Witt. Although slightly down on the day, the men's team are still battling it out for third place in the standings, and the combined men's and women's team is still in third place.

On the day, the men, women and combined teams were all 5th, leaving the men 4th, women 5th and combined team 3rd in the standings. In the categories, Cath was 1st W45 (1st in standings), Sally 3rd W55 (2nd), James Graham 2nd M60 (1st) and Chris Desmond 4th M50 (3rd).

The Kent Fitness League is a series of cross-country races between 18 registered Athletics Clubs in Kent. Any number of club members can compete, but 10 are needed to score in the team competition – 7 men (of whom two must be over 50 and one over 40) and 3 women (of whom one must be over 45 and one over 35). The next race in the series will be at Nurstead Court near Meopham on Sunday December 20th, starting at 11.00.

The Sevenoaks AC results were as follows:

The full results are here.

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