The Stragglers building on The Green Belt
Posted by on 28 May 2017
The Stragglers Green Belt Relay race, now in its 21st year, was reckoned to be the biggest and best event ever with 45 teams taking part racing over the 220 miles of London greenbelt on the weekend of the 20th and 21st of May. Stragglers did themselves proud by making up three of those teams, the most we have had out since 2012, this year with a ladies, men’s and vets teams fielding 33 runners in total.
The Ladies team acquitted themselves very well finishing 30th out of 45 teams taking part and 3rd out of four ladies teams entered, in a cumulative time of one day six hours and 32 minutes. Even more pleasingly Stragglers ladies managed to finish ahead of the traditionally very strong Ranelagh ladies team, a tough ask with everyone having to run on a second consecutive day. There were a number of excellent performances over the two days from individual team members. Of particular note is Carys Mills who took the course record for V45 women on stage 3 (Boveney). Sue Hall managed to go one better and actually do ‘the double’ taking the V45 record for Stage 2 (Staines Bridge) and then doing it again the following day on stage 13 (Thorndon Park).
The men’s team wound up in a very solid 21st place overall in a total time of one day four hours and 51 minutes. Again there were some very good performances across the team. At the ‘sharp end’ Ollie Bowers managed to record a 4th and 5th place respectively over the two days with Rob Wilcox recording a 6th place on day one and then getting pretty close to winning a stage overall winding up 3rd at West Hanger (Stage 20).
Last, but not least, the Stragglers Vets team finished in 8th place overall with a cumulative time of one day one hour and 53 minutes (the best time recorded by any Stragglers team since 2012). Overall Stragglers Vets were the second placed vets team (behind London Front Runners). The Vets can count themselves a bit unlucky inasmuch as this year’s time would have been good enough to have won the overall Vets prize last year! As the result suggests there were some excellent performances across the field. In particular Dean Morley has to be mentioned, breaking the V50 record on Stage 21 (Ripley).
The consolidated results of the three Stragglers teams can be found here. Well done everyone that took part and here’s to 2018!
