Hercules Wimbledon’s Fred Slemeck has staked his claim for a spot in the Surrey side that goes to the UK Inter-Counties Cross-Country Championships in Birmingham next month.

Slemeck finished 35th out of more than 1,000 competitors at last weekend’s South of England Cross-Country Championships on Parliament Hill.

His time over 15km of 53 minutes 33 seconds marked the club’s highest for 12 years.

The senior men, featuring Joe Clark, Jonathan Cornish, Richard McDowell, Rob Tuer and Peter Lee finished 13th overall.

Meanwhile, despite missing their top runner, Claire Grima, the senior women’s team finished 29th over 8km.

The scoring quartet were led in by Gina Galbraith followed by Lisa Thomas, Monika Crouse and Hannah Walker.

Overseas, former Hercules former English Schools and South of England 100m silver medallist Max Mondelli made an encouraging return to sprinting after more than a year out due to injury.

The 20-year-old, in his second year at Harvard University and his first race since last January, finished third over 60m in an indoor match against rivals Yale and Princeton on Staten Island, New York in 6.95 seconds.

He said: “I only ran once last year indoors and hobbled off the track with a stress fracture in my lower back.

“It knocked me out for the entire year, and after a year of rehab and rest I finally resumed training in the autumn.

“It feels good to run and be healthy after so long, albeit not at my best. I'm just happy to be injury free.”

He added: “Hopefully this weekend's run shook out the cobwebs and I can now start shaving off the milliseconds in time for the Ivy League Champs at the end of February.”