The Manchester Area Cross Country League moved on to a windy Heaton Park and a tough but relatively dry course.
Top Trafford performance was from Matt Sutton who finished a superb 3rd in the U17 Men race.
The U13 Boys were 4th in their event with good individual performances by Alex Bailey (12th), Seb Patrick (14th), Cynog Williams (20th) and Joe Bentall (23rd).
Trafford's U11 Boys team finished 5th, led by Oli Choi in an excellent 4th place. He was supported by Zak Gardner (18th) and Lee Robertson (27th).
On the Girls side, Danielle McMinn was 27th in the U15 Girls race. Marnie Mannion had a good run to finish 25th in the U13 Girls, followed by Katherine McMinn in 45th.
However, the highest placed Trafford girls were in the U11 race where Sadie Mannion was 21st, closely followed by Emily Wolstencroft in 22nd place.

Trafford teams had mixed success at the National Cross Country Relay Championships at Mansfield. This was the final event in the relay championship season and our teams were considerably limited by illnesses, injuries and other reasons for not running.
As usual, Beth Donnelly was our only athlete in the U17 Womens race and she came in 22nd out of 71 athletes on the first leg.
We had similar solo performances by Matt Sutton ( 49th out of 82 in U17 Men) and Mikey Kingston (54th out of 95 in U15 Boys).
Our U13 Boys team of Seb Patrick, Alex Bailey And Cynog Williams managed to finish a commendable 52nd out of the 92 teams which started in their age group.
However, pride of place goes to Trafford's U20 Mens Team who won National Silver medals by finishing 2nd out of 73 starting teams in their race. The team of Richard Powell, Danny Lawton and Zak Miller ran superbly and were unlucky to narrowly miss out on winning another national title. Richard Powell has been rewarded for his performance by being selected to run for the North of England in an International event in Holland later this month.

Several of Trafford's young distance runners travelled to Wollaton Park in Nottingham for the National Cross Country Championships - an event with over 100 years of history.
On a relatively fast course there were more than 7000 entries in total.
In the U20 Men's race, Richard Powell had one of his best races to finish 25th with Jack Donnelly 128th.
However, pride of place goes to Zak Miller who won the U17 Men's race by 11 seconds. Zak became Trafford's first ever male National Cross Country Champion in the club's 50 year history. Coincidentally, this is the same park in Nottingham where Zak's coach, Paul Shaw, gained his first international vest 14 years ago behind Mo Farah. In a field of 272 runners, Zak was supported by Ryan Babcock in a solid 86th place and Chris Brown 135th.
In the U15 Boys race, Jake Lonsdale finished in an excellent 23rd place with Colin Daly 158th.
In the youngest age group, U13 Boys, Jack Wilkinson survived a fall at the start to battle through to 74th in a field of 385 runners.
On the Girls side, Beth Donnelly had her best race of the season to finish 27th in the U17 Women's race.
Danielle McMinn, always keen to race anywhere, finished 292nd in the U13 Girls race after suffering some of the worst of the mud splash.
(Neil Canham)

The annual county cross country championships were held at Leigh Sports Village last Saturday.
The U13 Boys team finished 4th with Jack Wilkinson an excellent 5th place, Raffi Quirke 12th & Drew Baker 29th.
In the U13 Girls race, Danielle McMinn was 24th, Marnie Mannion 27th & Siobhan Conway 38th. The team finished 9th.
The Under 15 Boys team won bronze medals with Colin Daly 5th, Josh La Manna 11th, Joseph Tang 20th in his first cross country race for Trafford and Mikey Kingston 22nd.
Issy Hopwood finished 32nd in the U15 Girls race.
Best performance of the day went to Danny Lawton who won the U17 Mens race by over a minute. He was backed up by Chris Brown in 5th place and Ryan Babcock 10th. This meant that Trafford retained the team championship for the 3rd year in a row.
As a result, Danny, Chris, Colin & Jack have all been selected to represent Greater Manchester in the Inter Counties Championships in Birmingham in March.

As a result of his performance in the European Cross Country Championships in Serbia last week, Zak Miller has now been selected to run for Great Britain Juniors against USA & Europe at the Edinburgh Cross Country International next month.

ZAK MILLER won the English Schools cross-country title earlier this year and is off to Belgrade this week as part of Britain’s team for the European Championships.   Yet until this year the 16-year-old from Manchester was better known for his exploits in the
boxing ring, writes Jason Henderson.
Miller is a five-time North West champion in boxing and in 2010 he won the national title. He reckons he’s ranked about No.3 in the country for his age and weight, but his athletics achievements are quickly overtaking his fighting performances.
Remarkably, Miller doesn’t turn 17 until March, which means he’s more than two years younger than the Euro trials winner in Liverpool last week, Jonny Davies of Reading.
Miller could have run the under-17 men’s race in Liverpool, but instead gambled on taking on older rivals in the under-20 race – and it paid off with fourth place and a guaranteed spot in the GB team for this weekend’s European Championships in Belgrade.
“After the national cross-country relays in Mansfield my time there led me to think I should go for it in Liverpool,” he says. “It was still a bit of a surprise to finish as highly as I did, though.”
Yet Miller is not entirely unknown to the cross-country community. In March he won the English Schools title at Catton Hall despite having a boxing coach, Wayne Heywood at Ashton Albion Boxing Club, but no one to guide his running career.
Now, he is coached by Paul Shaw at Trafford AC and his daily diet of long, steady runs has been improved by the addition of harder, quality sessions.
“I’ve been boxing since about 10 or 11 years of age,” he explains. “I think the training for each sport helps each other. They complement each other.”
But he adds: “My running is going so well that I’m putting it first at the moment.”
Miller also used to play centre midfield for Stockport County but kicked that into touch after seeing team-mates get so easily injured.
“I’d like to be part of the scoring team in Belgrade,” he says. “And then I’ll hopefully have a few more chances to do well in the event due to my age.”
Who knows, Miller could eventually become a “British Benson Masya”. The late Kenyan distance legend won the Bupa Great North Run four times in the 1990s, but he also began his sporting life in the boxing ring.

PS. Zak finished a credible 31st out of over 150 entrants in his race. The GB team just missed out on a team medal, finishing 4th. Zak will be able to compete in this age group for three more years and we look forward to seeing what the future holds!