Marsden impresses with 37th position in Lotto Cross Cup

Debbie Marsden ran an excellent race in today's Lotto Cross Cup event in Brussels finishing 37th in a top class field in a time of 24.29. On a mud bath of a course, the winner was Kenya's Caroline Chepkonwy (who also won the event last year) in a time of 21.17. A good indicator of how tough the conditions were was that Chepkowny's time was nearly a minute slower than her winning time from last year. Leading Brit was Hatti Dean who finished 6th in a time of 21.44, just holding off Steph Twell who ran 21.45. Top Midland participant was Stroud's Emily Pidgeon who ran 21.54 for 9th place.

Marsden, who is on the road to recovery after a serious chest infection during November, was happy with her performance: "I really enjoyed it, although it was a serious challenge. I tried to start off easy, but with the quality of the field you can't help but get carried along too fast. Fortunately I seemed to get stronger in the third and fourth laps and managed to pick off a few athletes towards the end!"

Marsden's next target will be the South West XC champs, where she will hope to help Avon to secure victory in the inter-regional event, as well as Westbury to overall team victory!

Marsden steps up a level!

Good luck to Westbury's Debbie Marsden, who is heading over to Brussels this weekend to represent the Midlands in an inter-regional match as part of the Iris Lotto Cross Cup. Teaming up with Debbie for the Midlands is Jane Potter (Charnwood), Emily Pidgeon (Stroud) and Alison Lavender (Oswestry).

Marsden, who made the team by finishing 2nd behind Lavender at the Midland Women's 5m championship - which served as the main qualifying event for the competition - will be hoping to improve on the 35th place she secured in her debut at the event last year!

Go Debbie!

Marsden finishes 22nd in windy Portsmouth

Debbie Marsden finished 3rd counter for the Midlands team in a time of 1.01.19, which was enough to secure 22nd place overall in the women's race at the Great South Run. Conditions at the race were far from ideal, as a strong wind blew down the seafront, which made the last two miles "challenging" to say the least! It seems that the midlands won the inter-regional match, with Juliet Doyle finishing 10th in 56.49 and Kate Goodhead finishing 13th in 58.19.

The mens race made for an interesting event, as a seemingly suicidal first mile of 4.12 from eventual race winner Leonard Koman spread the field out within the first 150m. Koman's 5k splits of 13.48, 14.02 and 15.03 tell the story, as fatigue and the head wind in the final section cost him any chance of getting close to the world record, which was his stated aim pre-race. He eventually finished 22 seconds clear of Abel Kirui with Alistair Cragg 3rd.

Marsden receives Midlands Call up

Westbury's Debbie Marsden has been called up to represent the Midlands in an inter-territorial match, as part of the next round of the Iris Lotto Cross Cup held in Brussels on December 19th. Marsden who has been in excellent form both on her preferred road surface, and more recently showing considerable improvement on the country, where she has secured two 3rd places in the Gwent League this winter. She will be joined by Charnwood ACs Jane Potter, Telford's Claire Martin and Coventry Godiva's Frances Briscoe as they will aim to bring home team glory, at one of Europe's most prestigious XC events.

Congratulations to Debbie!