HARWICH Runners had a good day in the latest round of the 53-12 cross country season.

On home mud the hosting club powered to a season’s best overall second place finish.

In the ladies’ race, Kate Hodgkiss ran a well measured race eventually finishing comfortably clear of all other challengers to win for Harwich.

Claudine Tisbury was next home in a black and white vest placing 20th overall.

Hannah Jarvis continued her recent good form finishing 29th out of the 86 ladies that ran.

Completing the scoring team of four was Elspeth Knott in 36th.

This placed the ladies as third team overall.

There were also strong supporting runs from Carrie Hook, Vicky McCrea and Michelle Greenfield.

For the men, a close finish saw Graeme Knott edge ahead of Robert Reason to claim fourth spot.

Mark Lloyd coped well with the conditions to take 18th with Steve Cooper just behind in 24th. Sam Gooding-Matthews finished 34th with Simon Day in 37th.

Completing the eight scoring men were Jason Meachen, who bagged 45th spot despite losing a shoe and running the second half of the race in just his sock, and Robin Brookes, in 47th.

The men finished second overall, their highest placing of the season.

In a men’s field of 166 other impressive performances came from Paul Davison, 82nd, Nick Beales, 89th, and Justin Cooper-Keeble, in 111th In the accompanying junior race a total of 73 ran the mile course, with 14 of them representing Harwich.

Archie Barrington placed 16th overall and seventh in his age group (MU15).

Eddie Cannons was a very good 36th and was joined by Samuel Barstow, William Turner, Matthew Bruce and James Cooper running in the MU11 category .

Alexander McCreadie, Max Chilver and Tony Preston represented the MU13 age while George Barrington was 35th and sixth in the MU17 group.

Holly Turner ran well in the FU13 group and there were three girls running in the U11 category with Gabriella Bertram seventh in the group followed home by Isabella McCreadie and Annabel Brookes.

Elsewhere, Paul Kerrison completed the Bedford half marathon in a good one hour 46 minutes and 41 seconds placing him 402nd out of the 957 entrants.

Six Harwich runners competed in local parkruns.

At a frosty Castle Park in Colchester, Gary Parker was the first club member to complete the hilly five-kilometre course, in tenth in 19m 56s, beat his previous time there by over three minutes.

Next home was Peter Clarke (21m 46s) in 28th position overall and second in the 50-54 age category.

Paul McClelland finished 55th in 23m 26s, just pipping Dennis Warner (59th and third MV 55-59) by 47 seconds.

Francis Mills got around in 29m 35s to finish 143rd.

At the Great Cornard event, Richard Flutter crossed the finish line in 19m 59s for second place.