The final cross country event before Christmas was the Welsh Inter Regional Championships which, for the older age groups, doubles up as the Welsh Masters Championships. Brecon AC have done particularly well in this in recent years and this year was no exception. First out of the blocks were the master ladies (35+) and club secretary Satu Haikala (22.18) had an inspired race coming in 2nd and beating athletes who she hadn’t got near to yet this winter. Backed up well by Lynda Hayward (25.37) in 24th and Naomi Law (26.08) in 30th the Brecon ladies struck gold in the team section. Lynda’s run was remarkable because she hadn’t competed for over a year due to injury while it was also Naomi’s first race for some time. Brecon also had Bev Tucker (28.04) in 42nd to rely on if anyone had picked up a mid race injury. Brecon’s master men matched the team performance of the ladies as Austin Davies (31.42) showed the entire field a very clean pair of heels as he stormed to a win – the 2min20secs gap to 2nd was the biggest winning margin of the day by far. With Crispin Flower 18th (37.08), David Davies 23rd (37.28) and Pete Sowerby 33rd (38.42) making up the scoring 4 and Phil Kendrick in 35th cracking the whip just behind it was another gold medal winning performance. Another master Championship winner came later as M35 Martin Shaw (35.31) finished in 8th in the combined senior men and M35 race and was found to be the first of the M35’s – just reward for a very committed run. Also representing East Wales in this race was Brecon’s Harry Matthews who had a good run to come in 14th in 36.56

In the U20 women Brecon AC provided 2 of the East Wales team in Leigh Barker (8th) and Holly Rees (11th). Holly will probably be the more pleased with her performance but it was good to see both girls competing at this level. U20M Oli Cayless had a solid race to take 6th place, taking 26.05 for approximately 7km before the Price twins Ffion and Rhian again swung into action in the U17 girls race. On the course designed principally by father Derek, Ffion (17.14) battled it out with another East Wales athlete Natasha Cockram for most of the race before breaking away to win in the last half a mile. Rhian (18.32) meanwhile followed her own, very different, race plan and came in at a pleasing 5th place.
Lower down again there was a very pleasing debut at this level for Brecon AC newcomer Heidi Davies, who like the Price girls hails from Llandindod High School, as she came home in 5th in the U13 girls race. Another Brecon newcomer, also from Llandrindod H.S. was Matt Chaplin who ran well in the U15 boys race.

Over the Christmas period a number of the older athletes have turned out in local road races. At the Hereford 10K on New Years Morning the first club finisher was Satu who was the second woman overall and 1st F40 in a time of 40mins16secs. Next came 1st senior female Leigh Barker (44.28) followed by Paul Evans (45.27) ,16 year old Ellie Davies (46.11), Charlie Orr- Ewing (52.29), Alwyn Edwards (54.31) and Kath Crane (63.11) who won the F65 section. The Brecon ladies team of Satu, Leigh and Ellie won the team section making sure that each of the females went home with at least one medal.

On Sunday Satu raced again in the ‘Old master time’ 5 mile road race in Cardiff which doubles up as the Welsh Masters 5 mile championship. Despite struggling with hamstring stiffness Satu stopped the clock at 32.20 and took the second overall medal and 2nd in the F40 section. It was pleasing to see Sue Davies amongst the onlookers and the Wednesday night crowd will be pleased to hear that she is now making a good but slow recovery from her quad bike accident.
The combined Monday and Wednesday night running and walking groups mustered 14 people for the first (of many?) curry night in the week before Christmas. A fun night was had by all!