The 'greatest running race you never heard of'...

There was an article in the Daily Telegraph last week titled the "The greatest running race you have never heard of" which was about the English National Cross Country Championships. This was held on Saturday the 21st of February at Parliament Hill in London and attracted over 5000 club runners from all over England. Despite this, the event gets very little media coverage on radio, tv or in print.

The mens race alone over 12kms had over 2000 runners in it. There is a good video below of the start....skip forward to about 50 seconds. It is literally like a Tsunami of runners.



12kms by the way is 7.5 miles and not so long ago, it used to be 9 miles! (15kms). That's some slog over soft ground. The womens race was 8kms.

John Walshe sent me on the following additional info...."An Irishman, Martin McGann of East Cheshire Harriers, ran his 46th consecutive ‘National’ last week. He moved to England in 1969 and ran it for the first time the following year and hasn’t missed one since.

He is brother of Des McGann of Civil Service Harriers who ran the marathon for Ireland at the 1972 Olympics (along with Donie Walsh and Danny McDaid).

Martin McGann made a few trips to the Ballycotton ‘10’ with East Cheshire the 1990s, recording a time of 54:36 (46th place!) in 1990."