Round Norfolk Relay Report 2010

Runner in Hyde Park

Round Norfolk Relay report

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 195 miles and 54 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 they finish at roughly 09:30 on Sunday morning. The earliest starting team left King's Lynn at 05:30 on Saturday morning and latest at 12:00. We started at 07:30, with a predicted race time of 25.49. A mere 25:23 later we were finished, 26 minutes quicker that our prediction! (Note: official result shows 26.12 due to a time penalty collected when one of our stage runners pulled out through injury).

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.

Our best performances were by Anthony Bourne, 6th overall on stage 17 and Teresa Gaillard de Laubenque, 19th overall and fastest female on stage 10. (Although Teresa wasn’t able to claim her stage win prize due to a timekeeping technicality, we claimed the moral victory).

Notable mention goes to Teresa Griffiths who support cycled legs 5 to 8 and 15 to 17 dealing with some heavy showers Sunday morning with a stubborn refusal of any offer of a lift and a big smile.

Full results are available on http://www.roundnorfolkrelay.com/ with a summary of our team, stage by stage on individuals_by_team.pdf

We came 16th in the club category, from 25 teams and 35th overall, from 54 teams.

A special thanks to all the drivers and timekeepers on the team who dealt with sleep deprivation and challenging logistics to make the weekend a whole lot of fun and a huge success.

Alex Elferink

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