TWO Bury athletes represented Greater Manchester in the English Schools Cross Country Championships hosted at a muddy Temple Newsam Park in Leeds.

Oliver Makinson, running in the senior boys’ race, finished an impressive 48th and Greater Manchester’s second counter in a time of 24mins 28secs.

In the intermediate boys' race, Stefan Kalambouka demonstrated his continuing improvement in taking 250th place in a high quality field.

Freya Potts was selected for the GM squad as a non-travelling reserve.

A large number of Bury AC members took part in Saturday's Heaton Park parkrun saw as the event counted towards the seniors’ Grand Prix series, and seven of them finished in the top 15.

Jim Ardin narrowly lost out in a sprint finish with the winner to finish second, but was pleased with his new personal best of 16:57.

Patrick Babb was third, and men’s captain Byron Edwards was fourth, both recording new best times for the course of 17:12 and 17:18, respectively.

Ben Jones was eighth in 17:52 with Josh Birmingham 10th in a new PB of 18:18.

Paul Johnson was 11th in 18:45 and Giles Bennett 14th 19:09.

Matt Grice was next finisher in 19:38, followed by young Jack Smith in a new PB of 20.05 and Katie Geelan was second woman finisher in 20:25.

Anthony Hallahan set a new best of 20:32, followed closely by Chris Burrow in 20:42 and Andy Worthington (20:51).

Coach Dave Cole made a welcome return to competition completing the course in 21:39, followed by women’s captain Lizzi Cheshire (22:16). The other Bury finishers were Colin Smith (23:04), Victoria O’Brien (23:51), Susan Wheeldon (24:08 PB), Ed Hitchin (24:29 and first MV70), Dave Flood (25:07), Brianne Turner (25:37), Pam Hitchin (26:18), Dave Carroll (27:27) and Nicola Brown (30:42).

Jim Ardin currently leads the men’s Grand Prix standings and Katie Geelan tops the women’s standings.

On Sunday three Bury athletes competed at the Sale Indoor meeting at Sportcity.

Under-15 Jerel Livingston set a new PB of 7.65 in finishing runner-up in the 60m.

He followed that with a third place in the long jump, competing against senior athletes, with a furthest jump of 5.95m.

He is currently ranked fifth in the UK in his age group for the long jump event.

Jena Dickinson and Erin Garroch were also rewarded with personal bests in their events in the u15 competitions.

Jena set new bests in the 60m (8.65), long jump (4.22) and shot (7.11). Erin, taking part in the same events, set new bests in the long jump (3.62) and shot (5.89) and was only 0.06secs off a best in the 60m with 9.58.

Next weekend sees the Northern Athletics 12 and six-stage road relays in Birkenhead.