In extremely hot conditions Rebecca Mersh defending the European Junior Grand Prix and the UKA U20 titles she won last year would have needed to produce a personal best to have kept hold of her titles. Rebecca kept with the top two Germans for the first 3km before the gap slowly opened up and she knew she had to settle for third place  (52.41) 2 min ahead of Laura Reynolds of Ireland who finished just ahead of her in the World Youth Champs in Marrakech last year.

Fifteen year old Kathryn Granger competing against girls 2 or more years older was tackling only her second 10 km race and was pleased to hold the third German  to a 15 second lead for the first half of the race, keeping her final time for 7th place below 58 min. Later she declared that she had learnt a lot from being part of the race.

Natalie Myers still too young at 14 to compete at 10km tested herself out over  5 km for the first time. Out to demonstrate her improvement since this time last year, she took control of the three way battle with U17 Fiona McGorum (Leicester) and Birchfield’s 15 year old Holly Smith who had taken the bronze medal ahead of Natalie in three national championships last year.

After the first 10 mins Holly was unable to live with Natalie’s pace and finished almost 2 minutes behind Natalie’s 28.04, whilst Junior International Fiona McGorum only managed to catch and pass Natalie in the last 150 metres.