he Southern relays for most are one of the highlighted events clubs look forward to showcasing their best teams. It’s an opportunity for road, track and cross country runners to come together and race in an exciting team event. On this course at Gravesend, the short stage is only about the length of our own Bridges course, and the long stage nothing like the brutal one at Sutton Park. Running multi laps, two at 2.2km for the short stage and 3 for the long, makes it unfortunately confusing to follow the race. Although it was a nice sunny day, there was a very sharp East wind blowing throughout the afternoon which made this undulating course much tougher than last year. In our team we had Lizzie, Becky, Saron, Helen, Megan and myself.
I ran leg four ( the longer leg) I had to swap from leg 4 due to a ridiculous drive that took nearly 3.5 hrs to travel remarkably a strong run just outside 6min a mile on a hilly and very windy course. Still shrugging off the effects of Glandular fever and another horrific journey around the M25, she just set off very positively and clocked three laps at just over eight minutes each. By this time the gaps were huge but brought the team up another place to 16th in a time of 24:17.
1. Winchester 1. 47;16, 2. TVH 1;47.32, 3. AFD 1;48.14, 17. Belgrave 2;00.26 (L. Goldie-Scot 17.11, R. O’Kill 25.39, S. Haileselase 16.53, S. Amend 24.17, H. White 17.56, M. Bailey 18.30)