Margaret’s a Master! Horsham athlete helps GB to gold in Poland

They won in a combined team time of 1hr 57min.

Over 3000 athletes competed in the championships over seven days.

It covered 23 different disciplines and over 300 races. Margaret joined over 250 athletes from the British team who travelled to Toruń.

The cross country was held in Rudelka Park in central Toruń, a Polish city north-west of Warsaw.

It featured a 2k undulating loop of the park, and the loop involved running round the muddy verge encircling the path before turning back towards the centre of the park across forest trails, doing a U-turn to return to the park perimeter to complete the loop back at the start.

Each runner completed this loop four times to make an 8k circuit with the aggregate time across the top three runners from each country used to decide the winner.

Conditions were chilly but dry and five GB runners participated, with the three fastest aggregated to decide the winner.

Margaret’s time added 42.19 to the overall team time of 1.57.

Previously Horsham Joggers member Margaret had run in the 3000m final and achieved a new personal best time and finished eighth.

If that was a slight disappointment, it – and a familiar cross country environment, having trained on hills and trails around Horsham, spurred her on in the 8k.