At our 21st appearance at the Southern 6 Stage Road Relays in Aldershot we yet again achieved our target of finishing in the top 10 in this top level event that pitches the best club teams from the whole of Southern England against each other.

John Gilbert, making his debut, produced another great run as in his usual style he got stuck in with the ‘big boys’ at the front and he gave us our best ever opening position of 7th place to really set us up. Next up Simon Taylor, despite having the previous week’s Great North Run in his legs, really produced the goods with a gritty PB run and he amazingly held his position despite some really good company around him.

Our Marathon man James Connor then produced the performance of the day with an outstanding run that got us up to 3rd place with a 15sec improvement on his PB despite the windy conditions and having to run a solo second lap. Rich Munn then had to battle all the way, as he had quite a few stacked up behind him, eventually dropping to 10th place but he still kept us in touch with quite a few teams in front of him.

‘New boy’ Steve McGrory, filling in at the last minute as we lost our Captain through a late injury, then produced a really determined solid run - only being 11 sec slower than his earlier leg for our medal winning Vets team (!) to still keep us in with our real chance of our target of the top 10. Last up Jermaine Mays then closed us up really quickly looking relaxed, despite only doing very easy running after his break, and delivered the goods to ease us into 10th place well in front of local rivals Blackheath Harriers, Herne Hill and Medway & Maidstone at the end.

A full B team also had good day as they finished in our highest position ever for the B team (42nd overall and 9th B team) with Andy Moreton turning out first, despite only doing a few runs since his break, and getting us off to a solid start in 60th place in a field of 100 teams. New boy Jon Gill then showed what a real prospect he is by storming through the field gaining 21 places and moving himself into contention for an A team slot in the Nationals. Then great club man Phil Sanders, despite a management mix up that only gave him 20 mins warmup ,fought hard to overcome massive jetlag and very tired legs after a 30 km trail race in Canada.

New recruits to our B group Stuart Beaney and Alex Moreau then both performed above expectations, enjoying the team element of relay running into the bargain, and showed that they will bring both add valuable and welcome depth to our endurance squad.

Last up appropriately was the man who was there 21 years ago in our first ever appearance in these champs, Len Reilly ,who held his position to close the team – again after his Bronze medal team run for the V40 team earlier to round off an excellent day for the club with nearly 20 runners out on the day.

Ken