HORWICH'S men's team finished third in the Standish Hall trail race as Storm Brian ensured the event served up its usual mixture of mud and runnable trails

Harriers' team of James Jordan, Steven Foley, Doug Fleming and Tony Hesketh finished behind the Penny Lane Striders and Tri Preston teams.

Foley was second M45, Hesketh finished second M65 and for the women Julie Williamson, the club’s 2017 ladies' road champion, was third F45.

On Sunday more strong winds gave an edge to the inaugural running of the Serpent 6-Mile trail race from the Wilton Arms on Belmont Road, which ended with a fine one-two for Horwich as Nick Leigh prevailed by 10 seconds from Julian Goudge.

It was a three-horse race from the start with Geth Jones running in the colours of the race organisers Time 2 Run Events. Jones, Leigh and Goudge ran the right course and then had to overtake a group of 15 other runners who had mistakenly shaved off about 600 yards by missing a turn near Smithills farm.

The Horwich duo also won their respective age categories too.

David Barnes thought he had spotted the chance to win an unofficial category when he targeted the Wirksworth Undulator fell race in Derbyshire.

Last year there were no entrants from the North West in this race so he thought he might ‘win’ the NW category, however, when he arrived in the sodden valleys south of Matlock Baths, he found several Lancashire runners there too, including the redoubtable Darren Fishwick from Horwich’s neighbouring club Chorley.

Eslewhere, there were two firsts at parkrun this week as Paul Muller added to his fine record by being first home at Blackpool with a super 86-per-cent age grading, while at the other end of the age range, Isabella Merritt was first female home at Wythenshawe in a smart 21mins 49secs.

This year she has finished as first or second female in all but one of her nine parkruns.

At Pennington Flash, Ian Collings – usually seen supporting his children and other juniors in the Horwich vest – set a new personal best in fourth place.

Richard Howarth was second at Cuerden Valley, Sandra Kelly was second female at Marple and Gordon Stone was first M60 at Worsley Woods.

At Queens Park junior parkrun Aleks Clayden could not quite repeat his feat of the previous week and finished in a good second place.

Horwich RMI Harriers results: Standish Hall 10k trail race – 6th James Jordan 42:36, 11th Steven Foley 43:45, 46th Doug Fleming 48:46, 54th Tony Hesketh 49:34, 104th Bernadette Unsworth 1:00:08, 118th Julie Williamson 1:03:02.

Serpent 6-Mile trail race (Wilton Arms, Belmont) – 1st Nick Leigh 36:42, 2nd Julian Goudge 36:52.

Stuart Learmouth Memorial Wirksworth Undulator fell race – 93rd David Barnes 1:25:17.