Sunday report: Senior men’s teams

The senior men’s team have had several top 5 finishes in the 6 stage relays in the last few years, including two lots of silver medals. This year, however, the team knew that they would be hard pressed to even finish in the top 25 (the position needed to qualify for the national road relays) given injuries and other racing commitments for key runners. It was a chance though to blood some newcomers and team spirit was good throughout. The course was over a two lap course of 6km in distance with one short hill and one longer hill each lap.

Jack Bancroft opened proceedings, running maturely on a competitive first leg to run the team’s quickest leg with a time of 19.43 and 31^st place. Eliot Haimes, despite not having raced recently, then ran well to gain 6 places with a time of 19.46. Third leg was run by Alistair Lindsay, suffering from the after effects of a cold, but nevertheless performing solidly in running 20.35 and just losing 2 places. Ed Knudsen has recently joined the club and he will prove a useful acquisition, running 19.57 and gaining 5 places on leg4. Alex Wiltshire, at 17, is now old enough to run in the men’s team, but found this a tough debut slipping to 31^st place with a time of 21.30. Jon Gilling solidly brought the team to the finish in 31st place with a time of 21.16.

Matthew Lewis ran a solid 21.25 first leg (70^th) for the B team and Pete Darton then followed this up on leg 2 with a 22.47 clocking (76^th position). The remaining 4 legs were run by runners who had already run once, or twice in the case of Dickie Wythe! Times and team positions were: Simon Prior, 24.28 (79^th); Jack Bancroft, 21.34 (73^rd); Dickie Wythe, 23.14 (71^st); Matthew Lewis, 23.06 (71^st).

On the same day the Harriers had three veteran teams competing over 4 legs. The leading vet 40’s team saw Dickie Wythe running the first leg in 21.24 to hand over to Jon James who clocked an impressive 18.59 for fastest time of the day, for which he was duly awarded the gold medal. Andrew Deamer and Angus Henderson ran similar times of 21.06 and 21.18 to bring the team home in overall 5^th place.

The V40 B team finished 29^th with Simon Prior setting the quickest B team time in 22.56, and with Jason Tuck, Ed Tickner and Paul Chadwick all turning out to record good times and finish the team in 29^th, or 4^th B Team. The Harriers family prize is taken by the Priors who fielded 3 of their 4 members in the Harrier cause over the weekend – well done all – we’re a family club and we expect all team members to now follow your good example!

The V 50 team finished in 14^th place with Dickie Wythe joining Rex Whitcombe 25.47, Jim Smith 24.59 and Pete Wright 26.25

to complete a great team effort. It was great to see Jim coming all the way from Hereford for his race, and Rex making his debut at these prestigious races. He now knows what his son Reuben had done the previous day when he competed in the u17 men’s race!