20 January 2009	BIRMINGHAM CROSS COUNTRY LEAGUE - SPHINX
	After last year's problems we thought we would be lucky this season to avoid another drop further down the Birmingham league. However some great new recruits and the return of some more experienced campaigners has changed that perspective. With one race to go on the 14th February we are at the top of the division 2 table, with every chance of going up to Division One at the first attempt. A pretty flat but twisty course at Sphinx's Coventry base made for some close racing with smaller than usual gaps between the competitors.   Starting off with the smallest team in the Division is not ideal, but thanks to Team Manager Steve Shubotham, and supporter in chief Adrian Thiemicke, we got the encouragement we needed to return our best team result of the season so far. Lead runner was again come-back kid Tom Gayle. Although Tom could not quite repeat his win from last time out - he was only a few seconds off top spot and expressed himself satisfied with another strong run after a hard training week.  Top new recruit Seb Duffy also ran well but was a couple of places down on last time, again after a hard training week, but both he and Tom are looking forward to tapering down a bit more for the Midlands Championships next week-end. Tom and Seb are also well in contention for the Division 2 individual title. Ultra running specialist Brian Cole is running these races as training, but he sprinted round the last lap to make the top 10 again, and not far behind in 14th Steve Bazell continued his consistent season with another good run. Steve is Stoke AC's most committed senior athlete and there is no-one who is keener to see the team do well.   4 in 14 really laid down the gauntlet to the other teams and they could not match us on this occasion. Still returning from injury and forced to limit my pace in the early stages to guarantee completion of the race, I was actually really pleased with my 35th place, and again it took everything I had on the day to stay ahead of the fast improving youngster Dave Lee in 42nd. Although I am still naturally competitive there is nothing I would like better than to see Dave beat me next race into a place in the top 30!  However we were not quite finished, with new-comer Ant Faulkner storming home in 86th - up from 116th in the opening fixture at Sennelys - despite having had to endure Stitch for much of the race. M60 Richard Barrington was our last finisher, but by no means last in the race as he made sure that we completed a team yet again. So 6 counters in 42 and 108 points for the team score saw another 31 points taken out of rivals Wolves and Bilston, 86 from previous league leaders Bournville and leaves us with an overall lead of 66 points with one race to go. However next time out on the 14th February we still need to turn out our strongest team to make sure, so make sure it is in your diary and please look after yourselves... John Danahay Full results at http://www.birminghamccleague.co.uk/images/Div2Results_17Jan2009.pdf
	Senior Men 3. Tom Gayle  5. Seb Duffy 9. Brian Cole 14. Steve Bazell 35. John Danahay (M45) 42. Dave Lee 86. Ant Faulkner 198. Richard Barrington (M60)	1st Team 108 points 31.32 31.58 32.36 33.14 34.30 34.58 37.55 46.11