SPARTA shine at the Civil Service Cross Country Champs

Runners from across the regions and across DfT and MHCLG came together to compete at the Civil Service Cross Country Championships on 16th October at Parliament Hill Fields in London.

The Civil Service Cross Country Championships has a long history dating back over 100 years. Over that period there have been many individual winners from both DfT and MHCLG and their predeceasing Departments but rarely have our departments won a team trophy. The team trophies have been dominated by the likes of the MoD, DEFRA and other larger Departments.

So, it was a huge achievement for our Men’s team to win the team trophy last Wednesday on a bright sunny day at Parliament Hill Fields. Parliament Hill Fields is part of Hamstead Heath and appears in many films and TV series so if you visited it, you would recognise the area and wouldn’t be surprised if you found yourself imagining Hugh Grant walking along the very footpaths that you are using.

As you can expect with a name like Parliament Hill the cross country course was rather hilly and a good test for any runner undertaking the 8km course but that didn’t stop our runners for showing what they are capable of doing. The SPARTA team was led home by David Taylor who finished 2nd in a time of 31 minutes 32 seconds, next in was Luke Watson in 4th place, closely followed by Richard Wall in 5th. With 4 runners to complete the team it was a nervous wait for our final scoring runner who was Matt King who finished in a fantastic 21st place with George Plemper (24th) Thomas Speed (25th) and Simon Cereda (29th) only a few seconds behind him it was a real race to be the teams fourth scorer.

David Taylor not only took home the silver medal for finishing second but was also the first runner aged 35 or over home so took the gold medal in his age group. It was great to see runners of all ages competing, the oldest was in the over 70’s age group so it was truly an event for everyone. Full results of our runners are below:

Results

2 David Taylor (98)

4 Luke Watson (108)

5 Richard Wall (105)

21 Matt King (49)

24 George Plemper (77)

25 Thomas Speed (92)

29 Simon Cereda (20)

48 Ben Toogood (101)

52 Dan Lineham (56)

53 Miles Knight (50)

58 Simon Birks (12)

74 Peter Brohan (14)

78 Maciej Idzikowski (42)

81 Tim Roast (83)