Round Norfolk Relay report

Runner in Hyde Park

17 Serpies took part in the annual Round Norfolk Relay this weekend. Circumnavigating the county of Norfolk, as close to the county border as possible, and starting and finishing in King\’s Lynn, this is about the only traditional (baton-passing) long distance relay left on the race calendar. It\’s a total distance of 193 miles and 45 teams took part this year.

The race is organised a bit like our handicap: each team predicts its race time and adjusts the start appropriately so that the finish at roughly 09:30 on Sunday morning (today as I write this). The earliest starting team left King\’s Lynn at 05:30 on Saturday morning and latest at 13:00. We started at 09:00, with a predicted race time of 24:30. A mere 24:47 later we were finished, only 17 minutes off our prediction!

Much of the first part of the race is off road on the Norfolk Coastal path and everyone running those stages was impressed with the views and by the challenging running. As the race progresses, it becomes mostly road based, although there is one section on a sandy track through Thetford Forest in the middle of the night. Mary-Ellen Donovan looked like she enjoyed it as far as I could tell from the car following her!

Our best performances were by Nikolai Pitchforth on stage 12 and Ian Hodge (me!) on stage 3, both 9th overall.

Full results are available on http://www.roundnorfolkrelay.com/ with a summary of our team, stage by stage on
http://roundnorfolkrelay.com.active-ns.com/Results%202006/t1.htm

We came 11th in the open category and 20th overall, from 45 teams.

A special thanks to all the drivers on the team, especially Simon Bygrave who didn\’t even run!

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