South Of England 12 Stage Road Relays, Milton Keynes, 29 March 2015
Hillingdon AC’s Senior Men secured qualification for the National 12 Stage Road Relays on 11 April at Sutton Park in Birmingham by finishing in 21st place in the South of England 12 Stage Road Relays at Milton Keynes.
In very blustery conditions and intermittent heavy downpours, the team acquitted themselves well, as with the first 25 teams qualifying for the national final, Hillingdon’s men were always in the mix for a qualifying place with the team’s position varying between 19th and 24th place over the duration of the race.
The 12 stage relays are run over alternate “long” (7,664m) and “short” (5,053m) legs and on the long legs the club was able to call on the services of James Laing, (25:39), Rob Thompson (25:50), Simon Connell (28:32), Mike Dooley (27:35), Dan Thompson (27:18) and Martin Bateman (26:26). Of these, special mention must be made of Mike Dooley who not only made the effort to compete in these championships by driving up from Bath but who also arguably suffered the worst of the weather over the course of his leg.
On the short legs, there was remarkable consistency between five of the six runners with Dean Clark (17:55), Ruben Vos (17:56), Will Grbic, making his debut for the club (17:48), Philip Warburton (17:49) and Sam Blanshard (17:52) all running times within eight seconds of each other. Sam Lloyd was the only athlete to break this trend, running 17:22.
My thanks to all the athletes that competed at these championships in very testing weather conditions – especially those on later legs who had been forced to sit out the worst of the wind and rain by sheltering in the club tent but that still managed to put in strong performances at a critical stage of the race to ensure the club achieved qualification.
Full results may be found here
