It was another great day for Kent AC’s Vets at the South of England Road Relays on Sunday 26th September, Aldershot. Despite motorway drama which at one point made it look very unlikely that we would be able to field a complete team, the M40’s had a superb performance to take bronze medals and David Child had an outstanding run to do the 3rd fastest lap of the day in the M50 race.

Luke Armitage led off the M40’s on the first leg but was the only member of the team at the course at that stage as others were stuck in traffic after closure of the M4. Luke did a solid first leg to bring the team in 9th, and he was very relieved to see that Len Reilly was there to take over from him. Len set off but at that stage there were no 3rd or 4th leg runners at the course. After Len had completed half his leg, the car drivers finally arrived. Steve McGrory had the fastest change possible to get his kit and numbers on and was ready with 1 minute to spare. Len ran a great leg gaining 3 places to bring the team in 6th. Steve set off steadily and sped up over the second half of the course. He had an excellent run gaining two places to bring us in 4th and running the team’s fastest leg of the day. That left Andy Farquharson with work to do on the last leg to get us into the medals. Andy set off quickly and soon pulled us into 3rd position, but he was being closed down rapidly by a fast Aldershot runner. Halfway through his leg Andy had a 30 second lead on the Aldershot runner but he was closing rapidly. Andy rallied strongly in the last kilometre and managed to hold on to 3rd but the final margin was only 11 seconds, too close for comfort. It was a great effort for the M40’s improving from last years 16th place to get medals this year.

In the M50’s race Pete Boxshall went off on leg one and despite being just over a virus, he managed to bring the team in 16th after a reasonable run. Bernie Hutchinson took over on leg 2 and went out hard but then had a recurrence of a hamstring injury so could only hobble round slowly for the second half of the course. Bernie only dropped one place to 17th despite running over four minutes slower than he ran last year. Tim Connell took over on leg 3 and looked superb on the first half of the course. He did slow a bit in the second half, but still did a fast time and gained 3 places leaving us in 14th. David stormed off on the last leg and moved quickly through the field gaining four places to bring the team home in 10th. This was the same position as last year, but a top 10 finish when one of your runners is injured is a fine performance. Also, the team’s time was nearly two minutes quicker than last year. Well done to David on his 3rd fastest of the day. The only other Kent AC member to have done one of the three fastest laps at these relays since they have been at Aldershot for the past 22 years, is Jermaine Mays’ 3rd in the seniors in 2006
Full results at
http://www.afd.org.uk/general/relays9.htm