Garden City Runners enjoy the cross-country mud at Stevenage

Garden City Runners at the start of the Stevenage cross-country. Picture: GCR (Image: Garden City Runners)

Held over a surprisingly testing and undulating course round Fairlands Valley Park in Stevenage, including a very muddy section on the run-in to the finish, they were lead home by men’s captain James Huish.

He picked off five competitors in the final 200 metres with a sprint finish.

Martha Hall was the first of the club's females to finish with official results, both individual and team, still to be fully finalised.

The fifth and final race of the season is at Royston on February 18 but before that is the Hertfordshire Cross-country Championships, taking place on January 7 at Verulamium Park in St Albans.

GCRs had 88 involved in parkruns too on Saturday morning where there was a parkrun PB for Thomas Rose at Panshanger, clocking 19 minutes 16 seconds for fourth place, one position and 13 seconds behind Adam Wadley.

Elsewhere, at Stevenage Paul Guy was third at Stevenage where Zoe Stephens was 10th, and first female

There was a PB here too for Hiran Fernando with 24:03.

Lizzie Belcher claimed a PB of 26:35 at Presint 18, Putrajaya, Malaysia, while Steve Grout was also on his travels at Uppsala, Sweden.

Brian Robbins took on the Durlston Country Park event, just outside Swanage in Dorset, reported to have the most elevation of any parkrun in the country at 200m.

He said: "It was mostly uphill with the occasional very steep downhill gradient and absolutely no level ground.

"If anyone wants a challenge for the New Year, that’s the place to go."