Southern Road Relay Championships

Runner in Hyde Park

The autumn 6 stage road relays (4 stage for vets) is held in Aldershot each year, hosted by Aldershot, Farnham and District AC. Serpentine had a team in the seniors’ race and a V50 team in the vets race. We were unable to get a V40 or V60 team out this year (possibly because I was on holiday when teams had to be entered and nobody else did it!)

The vets race was first and our team achieved 9th place in the A teams (10th overall).

Ian Smith 22:51
Richard Long 25:48
David McGregor 22:26
David Smart 24:53
Overall 1:35:58

Next was the senior race with the usual high standard of competition and everyone fighting to qualify for the national championships (that is to finish in the top 25). Our team was hovering around the 25th place for most of the race until Martin Gaunt pulled out a blinding run on the last leg to take about seven places. We finished 20th overall (from 69 complete teams) with two B teams ahead of us i.e. 18th A team, easily qualifying.

Eric Vamben 19:33
Simon Barrett 19:43
Hugh Torry 20:15
Robin Tuddenham 20:29
Richard Phillips 20:50
Martin Gaunt 20:06
Overall: 2:00:56

The national championships will be held in Sutton Coldfield on 20th October. We’ll be there!

Footnote: If anyone is wondering about the women, their race is tomorrow (Sunday 30th) but we don’t have a team because, I’m sad to say, almost every fast woman in the club is either unavailable or injured.

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