Southern Men’s 12 Stage
Road Relay 2008 held at Rushmoor Arena,
Wells City Harriers Senior
Men’s team recorded their best ever result in one of
The relay consists of 12
athletes per team each running either 8.4km (2 laps of the course) or 4.2km
(1lap) a total of 75.6km (approx 47miles). The Wells team took 4hrs 15min to
finish in 7th place and gained automatic qualification for the National
Final to be held in Sutton Park ,Birmingham in three weeks time.
The team were led off by new
recruit Eliot Haimes
who has had a good season on the cross country circuit this year and hopes to
transfer this good form onto the roads. After a steady start on the first lap,
he began to move through the field to bring the team home in 10th
recording 27min 17sec for the 8.4km lap just over a minute behind the leaders
who at that stage were Thames Valley Harriers.
Street’s Jack Bancroft (a second year student at
Leg 3 saw the return to
racing after a 3 month break due to a shin injury of British International Ben Tickner. Ben approached this race with caution, running
the first lap slower than the second for a negative split, recording 13.35 and13.14 for an overall time of 26min49sec to bring
the team up to 6th. Club
stalwart and overall Street 5k champion, Andrew
Deamer ran well on stage 4 to record 14min 42sec and hung onto 7th
place.
British marathon star Adrian Marriot ran stage 5 and,
although his legs were still tired from his exploits of last weekend when he
won a half marathon in Switzerland, he produced the quickest long leg of the
day for the Wells team and 10th quickest overall. He also ran
negative splits of 13.27 and 13.15 for an overall time of 26min42sec to bring
the team back to 6th.
Matthew Lewis, competing for the club for the first time in this event, did well to
keep his nerve and ran a steady 14min and 58sec for stage 6 dropping back just
two places to 8th. Stage 7
saw the Club’s flying doctor, Andrew Hennessy, storm back through the field to
close on the leaders and bring the team into 5th place. This was a
commendable run from Andrew considering he has been injured since January with
a torn hamstring and has only recently been able to resume light training. His
time of 27min4sec was the third fastest for The Harriers. The oldest man on the
team ,one of the stalwarts of the club, Steve
Masters from Glastonbury, found the fast pace of the short leg quite
demanding but hung on well to run 15min10sec finishing 7th.
The first of the 3 members
of the team who are due to run in the
The last two runners for the
team, Jon Gilling and Dave Stanfield, are both in their final
ease down for the London Marathon .Jon ran a steady 30min8sec for leg 11 to
drop just one place to 6th whilst Dave rounded off a good day for
the Harriers with a solid 15min5sec for the final short stage bringing the team
home to their best ever finish of 7th.
Good luck to Alan, Jon and
Dave who will join several other Harriers this coming Sunday morning to take part
in the 27th running of the London Marathon.