Last Saturday's South of England Championships marked the start of seven weeks of intensive racing for the county's leading runners.

Inter-county and national championships follow at two week intervals for the seniors, but for the youngsters there are seven successive weekends of high class racing, some of which are schools competitions and may be confusing parents or those new to the sport.

The schools age groupings are one year different to the national age groups for cross country running, but this is no bad thing.

Young athletes struggling to keep their impetus going as they battle against rivals a year older during the early part of the winter discover that from late January through to end of the season there are also the school events where they find themselves at the top of the age groupings.

Today, at the Sussex Schools cross country championships at Crawley, the likes of Craig Ivemy, from the Hailsham club, will be wearing his Ringmer School colours to compete in the Sussex Schools cross-country championships.

Craig has dominated the under-15 age group in Sussex this season, winning his races, including a county title, by a street. Today he will race in the under-17 age group and will meet most of the runners who were getting the better of him last season.

Athletes in the mid-teens fluctuate considerably from year to year and Craig's progress this season would suggest that he may well be able to hold his own against last year's adversaries.

Brighton and Hove's Jack Vail and Joe Stephenson and Hailsham's Ben Warren, the leading under-17 runners this season, move up to under-19 and will have to face Darryl Hards (Phoenix).

It's believed Darryl was making history today by becoming the first Sussex senior champion to race in the Schools Championships.

A couple of weeks ago Darryl became the Sussex 10km. road race champion.

Currently the reigning Schools under-19 champion, he will be expected to retain his title ahead of the three younger performers.

Another intriguing clash comes in the under-15 girls where Hannah Bates (Patcham) and the Heath twins, Cheryl and Jenna (Hillcrest), who are in the first year in the age group, having dominated their age group in Sussex.

They stay in the under-15 Schools grouping, where they are at the top of the age group, but had to face Charlotte Browning, from Chichester, who is the number one under-13 runner in the country.

Last season Charlotte beat Hannah for the county under-13 crown, but the opportunity has not arisen for them to race so far this season.

Over the next few weeks the leading youngsters will be involved in the inter-county championships at Nottingham next Saturday (10th), the South East Schools inter-counties at Tunbridge Wells (17th), AAA of England Cross country championships (24th), the final Sussex Cross-country League races on 3rd March and the All England Schools Cross-country championships at Chelmsford the following week.

If the youngsters have any sense they should then be looking for a few weeks away from any competition and not rushing around to the various early season track meetings to get some fast times before the season really gets underway.

Brighton and Hove's Stephen Rees-Jones, who was narrowly defeated for the Sussex senior cross-country title at Lancing by Crawley's Gavin Thompson last month, is now back in Sheffield and he had a fine run in the North of England Cross country championships at Blackburn last weekend.

The runners had to cover 12km, somewhat shorter than the Southern runners had to race at Parliament Hill.

Rees-Jones had probably his best cross country run to date to finish in eighth place in 39min 54sec, some thirteen minutes faster than the winner recorded in the South of England championships.

Although the course was shorter than Parliament Hill, the difference in time would also suggest that conditions at Blackburn last Saturday were a little easier than the southern runners had to face.

Next Saturday the Inter-county cross country championships, incorporating the World Championship trials, are being held at Nottingham.

The Sussex senior men's team has been severely depleted as the leading Sussex runners had opted to race in the 4km trials which are not part of the Inter-county competition.