The ERRA National 6 and 4 Stage Road Relays were held in Sutton Park yesterday and, as in 2009, Serpentine sent one men's team (our second just failed to qualify) and two women's teams. With excellent results already at the southern relays and very few changes to the teams (none for the women's A) we were hopeful of some good results at the national level as well. Those of us who went along to watch and support were treated to some top class racing and we all came away very pleased with the final results.

First off were the women, with Mariah and Fiona on stage one. Mariah set the benchmark for the team finishing 22nd on her stage (16 places higher than last year) in a new Serpette record of 15:27 for the 4.3km course. Sandy was next for the A team and passed an astonishing 11 runners on stage 2 to put the team into 11th place at half way. Sylvie was next, and with her parents cheering her along passed another 2 runners to put the team into the top 10. Final runner for the A team was Becky, who judging by the quantity of baking she'd brought along seemed to have spent the week in the kitchen rather than training. Clearly that wasn't the case as she stormed round in 15:38 and moved up one more place to bring the team home in 8th place overall in 1:02:22 – 44secs faster than last year and our best ever result.

Meanwhile the B team was also progressing nicely through the field, with Catkin on stage 2 taking 3 places to move her team into 47th, then Kathryn another 10 places to move us into 37th, and finally Vic taking another 6 places to move the B team into 31st overall in a time of 1:07:35. This is similar to our A team's result from 2008 so it just shows how much we're improving!

In the brief interlude before the men's race started, some of Becky's baking was shown off, with the presentation of the world's largest cupcake to Hugh Torry whose birthday it had been on Friday. We decided it would be best to leave off eating it until after the race!

Shortly afterwards, it was time for the men to race. Richard went first for a change as Nick wanted to try stage 2. The pace at the start was pretty brutal and he finished in 50th place in 18:42 for the 5.9km course. Nick was next and ran the fastest Serpie stage of the day – 17:48 – passing 15 runners to put the team into 35th place. Martin was next but even though he ran faster than he ever has before on this course, he dropped a few places and the team move down to 40th. Tiago came next, running the 6-stage national for the first time, and clawed back a couple of spots to put us into 38th place. Then it was Aodh, selected for the team based on his performance at the Met. League XC last weekend. he passed another 6 runners and by this point the women's B team were starting to take bets on whether the men would pass their finishing position. Hugh was mercifully unaware of this extra pressure as he set off on stage 6, and passing another 3 runners he brought the team home in 29th place overall. Our best ever result, and our best time – 1:53:06.

Congratulations to all the team members, and thanks to team captains Andrew Reeves and Natalie Kolodziej for getting such strong teams together this year.

Photographs of the racing are on my website.

Full results are here, and Serpie statistics over the years are here.  

Ian Hodge