TWO Bury athletes were selected to represent Greater Manchester in the prestigious Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships, held for the second time in the grounds of Prestwold Hall in Loughborough on Saturday.

Brandon Quinton, running in the under-15 boys' race, had a strong run taking 108th place in the massive field in a time of 20mins 9secs for the 4.5k course.

Sophie Whittaker made her debut for the Greater Manchester senior women’s team, taking 193rd place with a typically gritty performance and covering the 8k in 42:01.

Ben Coop competed in the high-quality Podium 5k at Barrowsford in Lancashire on Sunday and such was the talent of the field that the first 10 all finished inside 15 minutes.

Coop ran the fastest 5k of his life to take a very creditable 25th place in 15:34, taking the scalp of Manchester Marathon winner Dave Norman in the process.

Five club members travelled to Sheffield to compete in the England Athletics Combined Events Championships for u15s and u17s.

Patrick Clarke and Amy Garroch competed in the u17 events, with Patrick taking an excellent 22nd with 3,009 points in the men’s heptathlon and Amy finishing 333rd with 2,456 points in the women’s pentathlon.

Both athletes produced lifetime best performances in some of their events, with Patrick setting new bests of 8.25 in the 60m, 8.00m in the shot, 1.65 in the high jump, 9.78 in the 60m hurdles and 3.18.29 in the 1000m.

Amy produced new best performances in the 60m hurdles (9.43) and long jump (4.80).

In the u15 pentathlon, Jay Cook finished 18th in the boys with 1,734 points and Ella Hall and Abigail Howard took 44th and 45th places, respectively, with scores of 2,006 and 1,998.

Unfortunately for Abigail, she 'no-heighted' in the high jump, costing her vital points.

However all of the young athletes set new event bests in the competition.

Jay set new bests in 60m hurdles (10.47), long jump (4.66), shot (8.78) and high jump (1.50), Abigail set bests in the 60m hurdles (9.97), long jump (4.40) and 800m (2.42.16) while Ella recorded new best marks in the shot (9.22) and high jump (1.17).

Bury had four runners in Sunday’s Irwell Valley 20-mile trail race where Byron Edwards took first place in the MV40 category in a time of 2:25:32.

Given he had completed a 27-mile training run the day before, the performance augers well for his forthcoming marathon races.

Colin Smith was sixth MV55 in a time of 2:55:24 and Irfan Qureshi just missed the three-hour mark, finishing seventh MV50 in 3:00:25.

Second claim member and club volunteer Joanna Degisi finished the course in 3:24:36.