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19th National Vets Road Relay Championships Sutton Park 20-May-2006 |
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Telford AC entered three teams : 4 x W35, 4 x M35, 8 x M40. The women followed up their 5th place of last year with a fantastic improvement to take 3rd place this year. Denise Sanders on first leg set off a little faster than she normally runs, handing over in 8th place in a time of 18.41, which was considerably quicker than she had anticipated. On leg 2 Gillian Pugh ran a very solid leg in 19.30, taking up two places. Julie Kirby ran a storming leg in 18.18 to bring Telford up into the bronze medal position. Despite having had injury problems, Cheralyn Evans ran the anchor leg and maintained the team's bronze medal position, finishing in 19.17. This was a brilliant team effort and set the standard for the men later in the day. [Shaftsbury Barnet took the gold medal and Wigan Phoenix the silver.] The first leg in the mens' teams were run by John Sanders (M40) and Darren Rimmer (M35). Both got their respective teams off to a good start, running above expectations and producing blistering finishes. Darren was in 18th place with 16.01 and John in 14th with 15.54 (up from 26th last year).
In the meantime the M40s were performing remarkably well. We only had two fully fit athletes; four of our top performers were out with injury or non-availability, and six of the team were either not well or just coming back from injury. Greg Wilson, who recently turned 50, ran a solid 15.55 on leg 2 to bring Telford up to 7th place. Rick Hailey ran an equally good leg in 16.00 to bring the team up to 5th. Dave Talbot ran 17.08, handing over to Mark Burnhope in 10th place. Mark produced the team's fastest leg of 15.29, to bring us up to third place. On leg 6 Steve Needs ran 16.31 to come home in 5th, followed by Paul Williams, who ran 17.58 and finished in 7th, and finally Pete Plant who ran 17.08 to finish in 9th. Realistically this was a very good performance from everyone in the M40s. Many clubs would simply not have turned out; this is clearly demonstrated by the fact that of sixty clubs entered, only about forty raced on the day. This is the first year in the last five that we have been out of the medals. We will be back!!
Jon Hassall The V35-44 Ladies team finished in 3rd place
TheV35-39 team finished in 6th place
The V40 eight man team finished in 9th place. |
Paul Ward took over for the M35s, running 15.15 to bring the team up into 3rd place and to win himself the bronze medal for the third fastest leg of the day overall. Lee Aston ran well up to expectations, maintaining 3rd place with 18.05. Malcolm Dawes completed the team on leg 4 with 18.04 and finishing in 6th place. This is a very creditable result, especially as Malcolm is a little over 35 (24 years over actually; he's nearly as old as me!)