2015 WEST SUSSEX FUN RUN LEAGUE

As you know our first year competing in the WSFRL was last year in 2014 and we came a very respectable 8th out of 18 other clubs. This year we started the year of slowly with the first race on New Year's Day where we only had 17 People attend. We soon showed that we were going to be a strong team with a big squad by having 32 runners turn out at Worthing Lido 4 Miler.

An even stronger squad and debut from Helen Wilkes helped the Hornets WIN the extremely muddy Horsham joggers Valentine race, the Hornets were off and running and other clubs had already noticed that we were all buzzed up for this league. As the year went on the Hornets were very consistent with numbers of over 25 at each run which was getting us regularly in the top 3 in every race.

The summer approached and a tricky fixture list piled up as away days to Worthing, Littlehampton and Chichester were in store, these races were also falling on a school night Wednesdays, impressively 29 Hornet runners turned out to Worthing and 21 travelled to Littlehampton and 14 Travelled to Chichester not getting home till after 10pm. This was amazing and well done to you all, unfortunately as we didn't have the full 25 runners at each Chichester and Littlehampton and we fell behind in the league and slipped down a few places.

Then came our home run the HORNET STINGER, this 9.5km brutal cross country had 50 hove hornet members marshal, car park attend, registration and generally put hours in before and on the day to make the race run smoothly. A big Thank you to all that helped out and of course Keith and David Hoy who put many hours in before and after making sure it all ran perfectly.

As the year progressed we had the strongest females in the league by a long way, runners Bobby, Rachael, Xenia, Lizz, Georgie ,Mel ,Lucy ,Helen were all chipping in and getting valuable 10 points each. What was also brilliant was that Jan Carroll wasn't going to run at Henfield but knew we were short decided of runners so she decided to give it a go and run which resulted in us winning that race, team work and commodore was at an all-time high.

I also must mention how nice it was having Jane Pidgeon come along to Fittleworth to come and support as well as Worthing when she couldn't run as had a broken toe but she still came and supported us which really does help. As the last few races were closing in the Hornets were closing the gap on 3rd place runners were even cancelling or moving their arrangements so they could run at Hickstead and Lancing, moving up from 5th to 4th going into the last race at Lancing; a nice local run in which we had a strong team out and manage to get a total of 82 points which joint topped that race along with Burgess Hill, this resulted in us coming 3rd in the WSFRL for 2015, a real achievement in our second year, well done and thank you to the 88 runners and also supporters who attended.

It's a great running league very friendly with some great courses; let's have a real go at winning it next year.