Having finished second in the opener at St Neots last month, they could only place seventh on Sunday with several of their members having competed in the North Midlands League less than 24 hours earlier.

They now find themselves seven league points behind Riverside Runners, the St Neots club who have won the league for the last two years, and that is almost certainly too much to claw back in the remaining four fixtures.

What really damaged Nene Valley's hopes was that they could only field two women, and that was made worse by the fact there was a record entry of 489 runners.

With scoring consisting of each club's first seven men and three women, any club who does not have enough runners has the number of finishers plus one added to their score for each runner they are short.

And with there being such a big field, that meant a whopping 490 points were added to Nene Valley's score.

Amazingly Nene Valley won the final race of last winter's series when again fielding just two women, but on that occasion there were not as many runners so the impact of the 'added points' was not so great.

Nene Valley had three in the first seven, Binns getting good backing from Nick Grimer and Josh Reed, who had both competed in the North Mids League a day earlier.

But they saw local clubs Hunts Athletic Club (for whom Alex Marshall was fourth woman), Bourne Town Harriers (who had Matt Grace in sixth) and Werrington Joggers – whose highlight was seeing junior victor Sam Hunt win his fifth race in a row – all finish ahead of them.

BRJ's Pete Galpin, the most successful runner in the history of the league with 35 Frostbite wins, was third but the day's most impressive performance came from PACTRAC teenager Josh Daniels.

The highly-rated triathlete is now becoming a real force as a runner and his fourth place in 27.13 was an excellent effort on the five-mile course.

He said: "I don't have much background in running but I'm concentrating on volume at the moment and that's why I'm improving fast.

"It's going well and I plan to run all of the remaining Frostbites and the main cross-country fixtures like the Nationals and Inter-Counties."



PAUL Salmon of BRJ finished 116th in the Wiltshire 10k in 49.28.