Ashton Court Estate, Bristol on Saturday 23/02/2002 8 Km (Senior Ladies)

The seventieth Senior Women's National Cross-Country Championships took place at Ashton Court Estate, Bristol. The Estate is a country park and mansion with 850 acres of woodland and grassland. View From sponsored the race for the fifth year running. The course was 8km and was mostly flat but contained some uphill and downhill sections.

Liz Yelling (Bedford & County AC) had won the inter-counties and was hot favourite for the race.

The runners were greeted with an icy wind as the starter fire the pistol. Straight from the gun Yelling hit the front and at the end of the opening straight her lead was 20 metres. Lucy Elliott (Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers) tried to go with Yelling but thought better of it and eased up and Amanda Allen (Birchfield Harriers) joined her in what seemed to be the battle for silver.

Yelling won by 63 seconds with Amanda Allen overcoming the challenge of Lucy Elliott for the runners-up spot. Elliott had a tussle with Gemma Phillips (Kendall AC) for the bronze and just edged Phillips by 2 seconds.

Liz Yelling told Kevin Fahey at Athletics Weekly: "No disrespect to the other girls but I felt I had another couple of gears there, it proved to be no more than a hard training run."

Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers reclaimed the team title from Sale Harriers with local club Bristol AC second and Tipton Harriers third. Shaftesbury Barnet had their quartet inside the first 23 runners home and won by 12 points. Lucy Elliott led the team home in third place and was assisted by S Cox (20th), S Vangraan (21st) and R Lewis (23rd).