Green Belt Relay report

Well, that was the wettest Green Belt Relay I\’ve ever done. It almost classed as a multi-sport event at times it was so wet. At least one well-known Serpie was spotted having an impromptu bath in the stream next to the finish of his stage: he reckoned he couldn\’t get any wetter so he may as well use the stream to wash the mud off! That said, I think everyone had a great time and we had some excellent performances, particularly from newer members in their first GBR. I\’ll probably get into trouble by naming names but I\’d like to highlight a few that caught my attention:
Elkie Thorndyke – her first GBR and a stage winner.
Helen Marks – her first GBR and winner of her stage on both days.
Andy Reeves – ran the stage he got lost on last year and won it this year in order to prove a point.
Claire Swann – reluctant at the idea of running two days in a row yet ended up doing 9.5 miles for the ladies B team on day 2 and was still smiling at the end.
Emily Robinson – took 9 minutes off her time from last year on the same stage.
We also had stage wins from Kevin Darcy, Karen Hancock, Robin Tuddenham, Simon Barrett, Jo Conn, Penny Thorn and Christine Lutsch. We also had one or two people get lost but that\’s all part of the race and everyone ran well to get some good overall times for their teams.
However… last year we won the overall event and the women\’s trophy; this year we only managed 2nd place for both as we were up against some strong competition that had us firmly in their sights. The winning men\’s team were an ad-hoc collection of fast guys from a number of clubs, calling themselves the \’Bushy Park Time Trial\” team and the winning ladies team from Ranelagh Harriers have been trying to win the ladies trophy for years. This year, their \’dream team\’ didn\’t have a single drop-out and it showed!
We did come back with trophies however. The men won the \”1st club\” trophy as the first proper running club and the ladies B team, won the \”toilet seat\” for coming last (by default since so many other teams failed to finish at all).
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