Dear All,

The SEAA 12 (men) and 6 (women) Stage Relays will be held at Milton Keynes on Sunday 24th March 2013. This event traditionally marks the changeover from the winter X-C season to the summer track season.

The venue is the same as last year – Stantonbury track – with the course run through Linford Wood, which offers a fully traffic free course and great spectator views. For men the course distance alternates between ~5k and ~7k each leg, for women each leg is ~5k.

This is your chance to experience top level road racing against the best club runners in the country and like last year, we want to widen the participation of these races to a greater number of Serpies and will put out as many teams as required to suit demand. (members of an incomplete team will still be able to run).

So to qualify you need to:

1. Be a FIRST CLAIM member of Serpentine.
2. Be registered with England Athletics (you can do this on the Serpentine website) 
3. Be available for the majority of the day (10am to 6pm) to run as well as to support your team mates (although we can be flexible on this if you have other important pre-arranged commitments)

Whatever your standard, if you want to participate please register your interest as the teams will be selected based on ability, however we strongly encourage the faster runners amongst you to step forward to represent your Club. With our “strength in depth” we historically do extremely well in this event.

The top 20 clubs (out of ~60) will be going to the National ERRA 12 Stage Road Racing Champs at Sutton Coldfield on Saturday 13th April. Serpentine has qualified for the past few years and it would be great to see 2 teams in the final this year. YOU CAN STILL DO THE SOUTHERNS EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR THE NATIONALS AND VICE-VERSA.

So if you want to participate please SIGN UP here: http://www.serpentine.org.uk/pages/race_road_relays.html

In the comments box please write:

1. Your expected 5km time on the day (so NOT your PB – the standard you expect to be on the day taking into account fitness, training, previous illnesses etc)
2. Any injuries you have now, that you hope to have overcome by the time the relay takes place – just to give me a heads up (but keep it short as you only have about 30 characters)
3. Your EA Registration number and DOB
4. Preference for short (5k) or long (7k) stages (men only)
5. Please state if you would NOT be willing to race in an incomplete team

Please remove your name from the list as soon as you realise you cannot run so we can keep track of the state of the teams.

Remember if you are training for a marathon you can easily do a lap warm-up, followed by your race, followed by a few laps warm down and hey presto you’ve done a long run with a quality 20mins section!

Depending on numbers we will either be going up by train or minibus (all travel paid by the club).

Looking forward to seeing the sign-up sheet fill up fast!

Any questions regarding the men’s team please contact me at Andrewreeves@serpentine.org.uk. If you have any questions regarding the women’s team please contact Victoria Crawford at victoriaemcrawford@gmail.com

Cheers

Andy