South of England Road Relays - Rushmore Arena, Aldershot - Sun, 6th Apr 2008
With the Summer Track season just weeks away, last weekend saw the finale to the Winter season with the South of England Road Relay Championships at Aldershot.
A last minute drop out through illness left WSEH with an incomplete team and though Gary Taylor bravely ran two of the legs to make up the deficit, WSEH’s 13th place out of the 50 or so teams that faced the starter, WSEH failed to score for this breach of the rules, a galling experience for those athletes that made the trip and awaited their turn in this 4 hour plus event.
The race is run over alternate long and short legs. Steve Kimber took the opening long leg and came home 12th in 27m32. Ian May immediately made inroads on the short 2nd leg to move up to 8th spot in 13m39. Nathan White pulled back yet another place on the 3rd leg with his 27m43 and the steady improvement continued with George Glancy moving into 6th place in 14m10. Owain Jones, still recovering from surgery, perhaps expectedly dropped back to 12th on the 5th leg with 28m54. The youngest member of the team Cameron Smart slipped to 16th in 16m38. This spot was held by Gary Taylor (30m07) and Luke Turton(14m38) on the next legs. Charlie Coleman improved to 14th on the 9th leg with his clocking of 29m06. John Bowers held his place with 16m27. Gary Taylor had his second run of the day at this point and pulled back another place with 30m51. Alex Tovey on the final leg continued the improvement to 13th with his short leg time of 13m56.
The Ladies Race over 6 stages saw WSEH perform surprisingly well considering that half the team were veterans, and finished just out of the medal hunt in 4th place. Sophie Morris led the charge on the opening leg to clock the fastest time of the day with 14m05. This position was held by Carolyn Dickie on the 2nd leg with her time of 15m43. Dee Smale, the first of the WSEH veterans slipped to 3rd with 17m00. Another vet Mary Edwards held her place with 17m08. Kreta Koulikova made her WSEH road debut with a 18m02 clocking slipping to 4th . Supervet Paula Fudge tried hard to get back amongst the medals with her 16m42 but the gaps had grown and she had to settle for 4th.
The Ladies B team included several WSEH youngsters who acquitted themselves well. Louisa Lingley led off in 16th place in 16m34. Lucy Roe dropped to 22nd in 18m46, but Yolanda Edwards clawed back a couple of places with her18m03. Leigh James had a very good run with 17m1`3 to move up another place. The revelation was young Rachel Stedman who ran a blinder to pull back to 9th with her 16m09, faster than her mother, former international Marina Stedman who clocked 16m40 for 11th place.
