Stragglers Steal Palace Silver
Posted by on 21 October 2017
The Southern Counties Road Relays were held this year (Sunday 24th September) at Crystal Palace. The race was an improvement on last year’s venue of Bedford Aerodrome and with the added bonus of starting and finishing on the former National Stadium athletics track. In total Stragglers were able to field 4 teams.
For the men the V40 team were led out by Malcolm Fletcher (dropping down an age category) but doing the M40s proud on the 5K hilly course in 20:17, stages 2 and 3 were then taken on by Rob Peacock and Martin Vivian with all 3 athletes running times within six seconds of each other. The best time of that team was saved to last with Gareth Pritchard running 19:26 on the anchor leg.
Competing against them was the Straggler M50 team, comprising Roy Reeder, Malcolm Davies, Brian Searle and Jim Desmond. Roy on the opening leg produced a sensational time of 17:41 and in the process was the 3rd fastest V50 man on the day. Unfortunately the other three weren’t quite as quick!, although the team finished a creditable sixth and were for large parts of the race in contention for a medal, missing out on third place by just over a minute.
For the ladies the senior women/open team was headed up by Rachel Woodthorpe running 15:17 for the hilly 2.26 mile course with Helen Davies running her close on second leg in a time of 15:23. Stages three and four comprising of Bridget Hibberd and Karen Levene gave that team a cumulative finishing time of 01:03:49.
However, the final word was left, once again to the Straggler Vet ladies who swept aside most of the opposition to achieve a silver team medal. The team were led out by Juliet Cleghorn running 15:01 handing over to Liz Killip with a 14:49 second lap and then Sarah Winter managing to go even better in 13 minutes 56 seconds with Sophie Biggs bringing the baton home in 14 minutes 20 seconds. In the process Sarah ran well enough to record the 4th fastest vet time of the day.
It was a fantastic result to achieve another Straggler podium finish against some of the best quality athletics clubs in the south of England.
Malcolm Davies
