SXCL Bourne Woods and the Tokyo Marathon
SXCL Bourne Woods
In between two sunny days it was a drizzly morning that saw over 300 runners assemble at the Rural Life Centre, Farnham for the fourth Southern Cross-Country League event of the 2025-26 season. The rain didn’t dampen spirits as the runners set off on the hilly, challenging route, with lots of surface mud.
Organised by Farnham Runners, the race director for the day was Chris Gill as Craig Tate-Grimes underwent training to become an official England Athletics race referee.
Due to much hard work, it all went smoothly and the course was carefully marked out. Many members and relatives acted as marshals or took on other essential roles while Richard Denby and Steve Bailey took the photos.
Refreshments for the runners after the race were organised by Julia Tagg, and Linda Tyler with help from Billy McCulloch, Bridget Naylor and Alison Buchanan on the day. Volunteers provided trays of sandwiches and cakes to accompany a hot drink, James Goodwin calculated all the team results while Jane Georghiou later typed up the individual results.
The club’s efforts were rewarded with an excellent placing of second overall out of the 21 clubs taking part, with both their men’s and ladies’ teams ranking second.
Amazingly the club’s two front runners, first lady Lizzie May and third man Joe Collins, had run 10 miles on their way there as part of their training for the London marathon! Chris Carey 10th, Alex Elsey 13th and Matt Saker 21st ran strongly for their fine team positions. For the ladies Eloise Stradling 8th, Gabi Hitchcock 17th and Linda Tyler 24th, just ahead of Gemma Whitehouse 25th, gave the team its high placing. In all 47 Farnham Runners took part in the race.
Tokyo Marathon
Chris Matthews took on a different challenge. He was in Tokyo for his final Abbott World Major Six Star Marathon medal after previously running marathons in New York, Berlin, Boston, Chicago as well as London.
He reported:
“A tough day at the office today, lack of training, jet lag and a cold meant it was never going to be quick, but that didn’t matter. I had no real target time. I started strong for first 8/10 miles but was struggling to get enough air in so after that reassessed and it was all about getting to the finish line.
This was all about the big medal! It was all about Star Number 6 today!”
See the Photo Gallery 2026 for further photos from these events.