South of England 12/6 Stage Road Relays 2011
Our men's road relay team took a bronze medal on Sunday at the prestigious South of England 12-Stage Road Relay Championship at Milton Keynes. It was a taut affair with our A team yo-yo'ing up and down the order until we finally secured third place. Our women's team placed a very respectable 8th in their 6-Stage event. We were the only club to close a full women's B team, while our men were initially awarded the prize for 1st B team, but this subsequently appears to have been an error.
Pre-race, a number of in-house club experts had predicted our cumulated team time to be around the 4 hours 14 minutes mark, which we thought might earn us a medal, though not the gold. As things turned out, the race was won in 4:17.46, while we ran 4:20.03, so there were indeed a number of surprises as the day unfolded.
Our team underwent a race-day reshuffle when Ben Hope withdrew suffering from a bad fever. We moved Hywel Care, who had raced CC for Wales in Antrim the day before, from a short (5.5K) leg to a long (8K) and inserted Angus Holford out of the B team. As team declarations were submitted, big hitters Aldershot, Newham and Belgrave were all rumoured to be relatively weak.
Our early legs went very much to plan. Dan Agustus was in a fair-sized lead group which ran steadily for a mile, before dropping off the back when there was an acceleration. He came home in 10th place in 25.11, 1" faster than in 2010. Gavin Lewis had not initially been on the team-sheet but was called in mid-week, and gave the team a very sound performance on leg 2, a leg notable for two extremely quick times by youngsters Daniel Clorley (Luton) and Jonny Hay (Aldershot), who ran 16.11 and 16.13 respectively for the quickest short stages of the day. Lewis initially followed Norwich's Rich Ward, and got stuck into a little group of runners that helped drag him around to a time of 17.31, a pace that equates to passing the 5K mark in 15.55. He dropped one place to 11th.
On stage 3, our top man, England representative Dave Wardle, felt heavy-legged pre-race due to intensively training for the Brighton Marathon in a fortnight's time. Nonetheless he blasted through the field to come home in 2nd place having run 24.19, 9" short of his 2010 time. Amongst the men he passed were Shaftesbury's World Junior CC representative Richard Goodman. After this leg, Aldershot led the race, 70" ahead of us.
On leg 4, Andy Mariani did not feel good at all, yet recorded the second-quickest time on that leg, 17.29, which took him above Kevin Murphy in our all-time Milton Keynes rankings. He chipped 10" off Aldershot's lead and increased our lead over everyone else except Newham. The in-form Bertie Powell took off on leg 5 having run 21 miles in 1hour57 to win the Cranleigh 21 last weekend. Like Mariani, he reported feeling bad, but he returned a very fine 25.14, which chipped 20" off his own Milton Keynes best. He was passed by two excellent athletes, Scottish international Chris Mackay (Newham) who ran the 8th quickest-ever long stage of 23.36, and Southern CC 6th-placer Glen Watts of Shaftesbury. So 4th after 5 legs.
On leg 6 Newham took the lead despite their man not running particularly quickly. Our Tom Phillips went past Shaftesbury but was passed by Highgate as he ran 17.54, which probably does not reflect his fitness. He felt he went off too fast, which in turn probably reflects a lack of road race experience and his recent track sessions which made the first part of the course feel deceptively easy. Hywel Care did a great team job racing for the 2nd time in 24 hours by going sub26, 25.52 to be precise. His exertions (14th in the Home Countries International CC) caught up on him towards the end of his leg, naturally enough. He was passed by Dan Watts of Shaftesbury but apart from that we only really lost time to Newham on this leg. Now 5th.
Excitement levels were raised at the end of stage 8 as Omar Mansour overtook Highgate and pulled back 45" on Shaftesbury's veteran Tony Jackson to cross the line 4th but just a step behind 3rd. His time of 17.30 was probably a tad disappointing given his 17.20 of a year previous. At this point Newham's lead over us was 2 and 1/2 minutes, and Aldershot's 2 minutes, and we were keeping our fingers crossed about those pre-race rumours of tail-end weakness. But we received a shock to the system on leg 9 as Kevin Kane had a nightmare run of 27.14, losing 2 places. He was carrying the tail-end of a cough but had not thought it to still be in his system, so it was a tormented road around the lonely lake as he saw the race slipping away from him. Newham's lead over us grew to 5 minutes, Aldershot, Highgate and Shaftesbury went away from us, and Belgrave passed us.
18 minutes later the blues were dispersed when Angus Holford surged around the final corner back in 4th place! The tail-end slump had materialised, after all! The Shaftesbury and Aldershot men had posted slow times. Belgrave's former international Neil Speaight failed to make a significant inroad into Holford, so Holford had set Mark Burgess up to aim at Belgrave's former captain Will Cockerell in the battle for at least the bronze medals. Holford's 18.01 was 3" off his 2009 best.
We were confident that Burgess would take substantial time out of the Bels' man and felt he would not be threatened from behind. But Burgess, too, had a horrible day. Initially he caught Cockerell and opened up a gap, so Cockerell must have scarcely believed his eyes when our man slowed as he ran into breathing difficulties and Cockerell was able to open the gap back up again. In fact, Burgess's 26.02 still took 12" out of Cockerell and we were 17" behind Bels and over a minute clear of Thames Hare and Hounds.
On the anchor leg start line, Matt Shone eyed up the opposition and recognised Belgrave's Knut Hegvold, whose 46-year old limitations he was cognizant with, so he was confident he had the bronze sewn up, and he launched a calculated gamble to aim instead for the silver medal position, held by Ryan McKinlay of Highgate. He quickly passed Hegvold as he put in a major effort for 6-7 minutes to see if McKinlay would heave into view, but McKinlay was running well and Shone paid the price with a very ugly last mile to notch a time of 17.46.
So we had the bronze medals after all. Newham held onto first place despite their relative weakness in later legs, and Highgate confirmed their recent re-emergence as a competitive force. Aldershot and Shaftesbury faded away to 6th and 13th respectively as Thames Hare and Hounds took fourth place. We and Newham were the only Essex clubs represented at this once extremely prestigious event. 14 of the 31 teams that closed are members of the Metropolitan CC League!
A relieved Team Manager Terry McCarthy accepted that, with a winning time of only 4:17.46, the gold medals had been there for the taking. "You can look at our result positively or negatively. Despite the mediocre standard we weren't good enough for gold. Yet we were third-best of all these fine old clubs on the day, and it's the 3rd set of Southern 12-stage medals in 4 years, so we've achieved some element of consistency. Nobody can fault us for desire, team spirit and togetherness, but we know we can run better."
Footnote: Stephan Wenk was more or less forced to skip the relays and run the Eastleigh 10K in search of the sub 31.30 clocking which would gain him selection for Switzerland in the upcoming European Duathlon Championships. Happily he did so, running.... 31.29!
Women's A team
After a season of under-performance, it was pleasing that we could field two full 6-stage teams here, and it was good to have some young blood involved. All predictions were on hold as we fielded Kay Foy and Sidnie Sales, unaccustomed to top-level relays.
On the always-hot leg 1, classy W40 Bernie Pritchett secured 18th out of 27 starters as she ran 21.24, which stacked up well amidst the day's results. Diana Kennedy followed that up with a solid 21.47 as the positions all switched about and we finished 1 higher, in 17th.
U20 Sidnie Sales made her senior A team debut and should be satisfied with a very tidy 22.33 which hoisted us up to 14th place and was 11th fastest on that leg. Kay Foy then produced an extremely good run of 20.42 - fourth fastest on that leg - to put us into 10th at the end of leg 4. Having 20-year old 800m runner Foy 'put away' established athletes like Pritchett and Kennedy on the roads is a most welcome development and possibly indicates potential at 5000m.
On leg 5 it was great to see Linda Jackson back in action after a long, long injury, despite not yet firing on all cylinders. Her 21.37 put us into 8th place. Our anchor leg was Lauren Stewart who had a huge gap of 2 and 1/2 minutes in front of her which she was unable to do much about, despite running our quickest leg of the day, 20.31.
The medals went, in order, to Aldershot, Arena 80 and Norwich. Met League champions Serpentine were 6th and old rivals Highgate 10th. No other Essex clubs sent teams.
Women's B team
Andrea Possee ran a good first leg of 22.52 for 25th place, not far short of our slowest A team time. Jenny Thomas made a rare relay appearance and ran 25.00 to take us up to 23rd. Suna Yokes made her senior debut and brought us to 22nd as she ran 26.15.
W50 Stef McCarthy was rightly pleased with her 24.17 timing, proving that the road and not CC is her forte. On leg 5 Kavita Solder managed to pip Yokes' time by 1", running 26.14 as we went to 21st. And the anchor leg was team manager Alex Wardle who had run a 5K race on Friday. This time she clocked 24.20 and took us to 19th. In fact there were only 19 complete teams and ours was the only complete B team.
Men's B team
Our B team kicked off with Darren Southcott, in whom a few future hopes are placed. Recently recovered from a knee injury, he was a little disappointed with his time of 27.22, but he made the common mistake of going off too hard and his manager would have been surprised with anything much faster. He was 27th of the 39 starters representing 31 clubs. Next, Ben Phillips, a 400m hurdler involved for the team spirit and to support brother Tom, ran a decent 20.20 for what is clearly very over-distance for him, dropping 3 places in the process.
Richard Holland on leg 3 ran a terrific 27.27 to take us up to 26th. M50 Holland is losing scarcely any time as the years go by. Karim Ali ran 19.45 here in 2009 and 19.48 this time as we lost 1 position on leg 4. Leg 5 was a lonely road for Ed Messer as there was nobody in sight, but one has to be prepared for that eventuality in a relay. His 28.42 kept us in 27th.
Triathlete Chris Symonds had the same problem - nobody in sight. He ran 19.24 for the team's fastest short stage as we raced against the clock in a virtual void. Jon Long had the same but gained one place as Newham's B team closed after 6 legs. Long, training for the London Marathon, felt his 30.42 reflected his training form. M45 Andy Coleman ran a sound 20.00 and kept the team ahead of 7 teams at this stage.
M50 Alistair Holford had switched to a long leg on the day as son Angus was called into the A team and he never races as long as 5 miles on the road. He suffered a little in the quads and recorded 33.37, losing 3 spots. On stage 10 M45 Steve Lambert (22.49) dropped to 30th and, as teams folded, there was only one team (Milton Keynes B) behind, in fact a massive 26 minutes behind.
On leg 11 was the welcome sight of a return to at least semi-competitive running by Jon Powell who has lost substantial weight since last summer and was rightly content to record 28.02 off 6 weeks' jogging.
A rumour ran around that we were possibly first B team, and team manager Terry McCarthy made a last-minute decision to close the team by participating in the so-called "mass start" which actually involved about 8 men. Once on the tarmac, all he really cared about was beating Steve Lambert's time, and he did so "comfortably" by running 22.39 to finish 30th team.
At the awards ceremony, wine was rained upon us as the men's A team received 12 bottles (along with their bronze medals), the women's B team took 6 bottles for first (and only) B team, and our B team were awarded 1st B team, though it turned out subsequently that Serpentine had in fact beaten us by some 9 minutes.