National 12- and 6-Stage RRs: Women 19th, Men 20th
The UK's highest-quality club endurance event of the year, featuring numerous international athletes, was held, as always, at Sutton Park near Birmingham on Saturday. The National 12- and 6-Stage Road Relays attract those British clubs with the best middle- and long-distance running strength-in-depth. Our women's team finished 19th and our men's team 20th.
Men's 12-Stage
This year's race was characterised by the very warm weather which attracted even more noisy supporters than usual, and by a terrific battle for the prestigious national medals in the men's race. As the defining last leg began after almost 4 hours running, Tipton Harriers from the Black Country were neck-and-neck with the North-East's Morpeth Harriers.
540 photos taken by Adrian Royle, 16th on the all-time UK 10,000 ranking.
This is always the team managers' most difficult event of the year - getting the team to the start line often involves dealing with late-in-the-day problems. And then it's fingers crossed that nobody pulls a hamstring somewhere out on the course. So there is always an element of luck as well as judgement. This year the men's team were short on the luck side, but returned a satisfactory result of 20th of the 59 teams that finished the race, having begun the day hoping for top 15. But there were, of course, 12 individual stories.
Our lads' result was defined by the time we "lost" on 3 of the crucial long legs (8.629 K) compared to our optimistic hopes, meaning our cumulative time was around 6 minutes slower than we expected. We were anticipating times of 27.00 to 28.00 minutes for Hywel Care, Mark Burgess and Ben Hope. Care woke with a soaring pulse/fever but never considered withdrawing as he knew it would wreck the team. Knowing he would not be able to exploit the benefits of the ultra-competitive Leg 1, as planned, he moved down to leg 3 and ran 28.55. Student Burgess also has a gardening business and, having recently resumed his running career, is in the process of adapting to the treble demands of studying, a physical job and hard training. In the 2 days preceding this race he had worked 10 hours per day in the sun, which explained his time of 29.30. "I have to earn a living", said Mark quite rightly. But he is convinced that he will make the adaptation and become a stronger athlete for it - and with conviction like that, he is likely to succeed. Hope is hoping to run 2.25 in the London Marathon next week and he was disappointed to cover this 5+ mile distance in little more than that 2.25 pace to clock 29.29. He suspected he was still leg-weary from a 24-mile run the previous weekend. He has certainly "done the training" for London, and he should not allow this result to affect his confidence.
Most of our other lads ran close to, or exceeded, expectations. With Angus Holford, our slowest long stage man, moved to Leg 1, and these other lads not 100%, it meant the team started down the field and moved up gradually as the day unfolded. Many of the long stage times from all clubs seemed a little "down", which was attributable to the heat.
Holford is a complete team man who will step in wherever he is needed, and he was needed on the long Stage 1. His 29.59 was a 40" improvement on his 2010 time and left us in 49th place. On our first short leg (4.835 K) Omar Mansour's 15.27 was around 10" short of "pleasing" but he had had a difficult week for family reasons and moving accommodation, and he elevated us to 41st. Care put us into 37th. On leg 4, for Jon Powell this was an important day for it signalled a return towards competitive running after allowing his fitness to decline substantially. He was rightly delighted with his 16.19 off relatively little comeback training and is looking forward to serious future improvement. Now we were 36th. We made no inroad through Burgess's 5th leg.
On leg 6 there was a remarkable run from Daniel Hawellek. The day before the race we had lost Swiss international duathlete Stephan Wenk to a sore throat/fever. Wenk is due to represent Switzerland in the European Duathlon Championship next weekend and rightly decided that he could not risk delaying his recovery by racing with a fever. Team Manager Terry McCarthy, in desperation, turned to Hawellek, who is rarely able to commit to racing due to a problem with his legs. But on this occasion he was able respond positively. He altered his domestic plans, travelled to Sutton Park, and ran the quickest of all our short legs - 15.17 ! And this off running training he describes as "1 mile each way to the creche pushing the baby-stroller"!
Hawellek brought us up to 32. Hope maintained that. Gavin Lewis then ran a decent 15.29 and passed Luton AC and Tonbridge. His manager insisted he might have cracked 15.20 if he had not spent an hour tanning himself in the sun. To be fair, he was 8th quickest overall on leg 8. And we had also been closing the gaps on teams ahead of us who had started with fast runners but were gradually introducing weaker men, unlike ourselves. Bertie Powell benefited from this and raised spirits in the camp by gaining 8 places to leave us in 22nd after 9 legs. His 28.03 compared favourably with his usual rivals, such as Dodwell of Highgate, Trapmore of Shaftesbury, and Richard Phillips and Hugh Torry of Serpentine, who all ran slower. Powell is hoping to run sub-2.30 next week in "the London".
Powell's run also meant he secured the Ken Bray Trophy for winter season consistency for an unprecedented 6th consecutive year - a tremendous achievement for the 25-year old whose name always goes down first on the team sheet because he never misses a team race. Many congratulations on this remarkable record!!
Tom Phillips started leg 10 with nobody in sight so was "running blind", as it were. He was a little disappointed with his 15.45 but he brought us right up behind Salford and Tipton Harriers "B" team (Tipton won the battle for gold in their centenary year, and were also the first "B" team home). It was not long before Matt Shone on leg 11 caught the two teams in his sights. Having consolidated his position for a while by running with them, he "said goodbye"and headed off to see if anyone else was "coming back" to him. We were now 20th - a barrier of sorts. In 19th were our friendly Met League rivals Serpentine, running well today, and they were in fact drawing away from us on leg 11 through Hugh Torry. So Shone was left in a relative no-man's land and recorded 29.09, probably a fair return given the little training he has been able to do. Our anchor man, 19-year old Darren Southcott, had been hanging around all day waiting for his run and, once he set off, had nobody in sight except slow lapped runners. So he was never going to record a thrilling time. However, his 16.20 was a good improvement on 2010's 16.55 and he ensured that there was no coming back for Salford, lying 21st.
We had to take a hit this time vis-a-vis some of our Southern rivals. Aldershot were 12th, Shaftesbury showed improvement in 13th, Highgate maintained their good form in 14th, and Serpentine got the better of us by 2 minutes. But we were not the only club to suffer disappointment. Leeds AC and Glasgow's Shettleston had both been amongst the pre-race favourites, yet finished 7th and 11th respectively.
The fastest long stage of the day was 25.48 by Phil Nicholls (Tipton), and the fastest short stage 13.49 by Nick McCormick (Morpeth).
Team manager McCarthy said, "What was pleasing from the club's point of view is that this national-level performance was achieved with 8 lads who have been with us since they were teenagers, most of whom are still under 23s. They clearly enjoy the event and have shown that they are prepared to make individual sacrifices for the sake of the team - absolutely vital in road relays."
Initial talks have begun between some of the leading clubs (Newham, 2nd here, Highgate and ourselves) about taking a lead in helping to promote the relays, especially the Southern 12-Stage, more widely amongst other local clubs in 2012 (we and Newham were again the only Essex clubs represented). Our younger athletes already look like providing some welcome dynamism, enlivening the day with music and a megaphone at Sutton Park, and we can build bigger and better things based on this.
Women's 6-Stage
During the week preceding the race, our women's team had been in danger of folding due to domestic issues and a lack of replacements. But the desire to ensure we showed ourselves at such a major event proved strong, athletes made sacrifices, and our sextet represented the club very well.
Given the nature of the course, with the challenging hill within the first 1K, times for the 4.8K distance seem to equate to an athlete's absolutely most optimistic 5K time. On Saturday, for example, Aldershot's Charlotte Purdue (a fantastic 14th in the 2011 World CC championship) was the day's fastest with 15.23 (8" outside Steph Twell's course record), and her 5000m PB also happens to be 15.23.
Lauren Stewart ran our first leg and was again, as in the Southern a fortnight ago, our fastest, as she ran 17.47. This put us in 25th of the 66 teams that started (49 teams finished). It was 9" quicker than she ran here in 2010, so the 2.51 marathoner is in sound form. Bernie Pritchett's 18.29 on leg 2 looked like an improvement on her run of a fortnight before in the Southern 6-Stage, and she was able to enjoy the positive feeling of passing 7 athletes and putting us in the top 20.
On Stage 3, Kay Foy passed Holmfirth and Stockport but was herself passed by Swansea as she was a little disappointed with her 18.37. Nonetheless, the strength she has clearly gained over this winter should stand her in good stead for this summer's 800m targets. On stage 4 various clubs moved up and down around us but Linda Jackson kept us in 17th place, running 19.04. There is still much improvement to come from Jackson on this latest comeback, but at least she is back racing.
On leg 5 Andrea Possee, cheered on by her son and our charming little toddler team mascot Brennan, went past Salford, but Telford went past us and we stayed in 17th as she ran 20.42. And on our final leg team manager Alex Wardle stepped in to ensure we got around complete. She went past Southampton, but was herself passed by Salford, Bournville and Serpentine and we dropped 2 places to 19th.
Aldershot, Charnwood and Swansea were the 1-2-3 at the front. Our Met League companions Shaftesbury were 9th and Serpentine 13th. No other Met League clubs or Essex clubs were represented.
Team manager Wardle, now stepping down after many years in charge of the team, was pleased that she could sign off on the positive note of a satisfactory placing at national level. "We need to keep competing at this level," she said, "It's where Woodford need to be."