Heptonstall second for back-in-form Harrier Nick

The Heptonstall race attracts some of the best fell runners and Leigh was following on from a first place in the Dentdale road race the previous week.

This week, he split two GB international fell runners in Tom Adams and Karl Gray and Horwich’s Luke Foley had a great run in fourth place to achieve his best ever fell race result in a Horwich vest.

Alastair Murray was 19th and this gave Horwich the second team prize - only seven points behind the winning Calder Valley team.

The final hurrah of the cross-country season took place at Hop Farm in Kent for the English Schools championships and Horwich was proud to have three representatives in the Lancashire vests and one in the Greater Manchester colours.

County vests are much sought after and there were 16th place finishes for Lancashire with Horwich runners Harrison Stokes, in the junior boys’ race, and Charlotte Wilkinson, in the intermediate girls ‘race.

Benjamin Hall helped Lancashire achieve 11th place in the intermediate boys ‘race and Isaac Battye was in the Greater Manchester team that finished eighth in the senior boys’ race.

On the road, it was the Run Wigan Festival where Emma Bradley had the top result with second under-18s place in the 5k race.

Stephen Wibberley has trained hard in the winter months and saw the benefit with a 26th overall finish in the same race.

In the 10-mile race, Tony Hesketh continues to garner excellent results, this time second place in the M70 category.

And in the half marathon, both Katherine and Kevin Newall had impressive times to achieve high category finishes.

In parkrun, there were two firsts for Horwich runners with Richard Howarth coming in first at Preston and Marcus Taylor doing the same at Pennington Flash.

There was a big turnout of 142 runners at the Queens Park junior parkrun on Sunday and Louis Yates in 10th place achieved a new personal-best time of 10mins 6secs.