Keep on running

23rd April, 2010

During the last week of the spring term Packwood held its annual cross country run. Divided into senior and junior age categories, nearly every boy and girl in the school participated in the 1.7 km race. Although this year's event was blighted by cold and heavy rain, the children and several hardy members of staff still managed to complete the course which covers much of the school grounds. The route starts at the main pavilion, skirts the spinney and ends at the Wykey pavilion.

For the second consecutive year a new school record was set by Freddie Fielding who finished the race in 6 minutes, 11 seconds. Freddie is still only 11 years old and Mr Erskine, who organises Packwood's cross country is confident that the record will fall again during Freddie's forthcoming years in the senior age category. There were outstanding performances from many other participants too, notably Isabella Wythe who was competing in her first race having joined Packwood in September. She was the first junior to finish and was only two seconds behind Thea Holt-Smith who was the senior winner. Both Freddie and Isabella are very keen and talented runners who also represent Shropshire at cross country in their respective age groups.

The full list of winners follows:

Senior boys: Will Schofield      7 minutes 19 seconds  
Junior boys: Freddie Fielding    6 minutes 11 seconds
Girls:           Thea Holt-Smith  7 minutes 47 seconds 

One of the cross country staff is Mr Nogues, Packwood’s Head of Modern Foreign Languages. He also does a lot of running in his free time and during the Easter holidays competed in the first Brighton Marathon on Sunday 18th April. There were over seven and a half thousand competitors and Mr Nogues finished in an impressive 309th place achieving a personal best time of 3 hours, 20 minutes.

In September he will be organising a fun run at Packwood and by then will be back in rigorous training in preparation for the New York marathon in November where he is running to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care, and hoping to break his own record by completing the 26 mile course in under three and a quarter hours.