Aldershot Relays inc. SEAA Men’s 6-Stage road Relay, Rushmoor Arena
Beagles and Wells beat the Bels
Missing Phil Wicks (injured), Spencer Barden (retired from top level competition), Jonathan Blackledge (on a break), Tim Watson (overseas with the Army) and Alaster Stewart (a long term viral problem) - only Stephen Sharp survived in the A squad from last year's winning outfit. Others unavailable included Kris Gauson (on a break followed up by being ill), Darren Gauson (at university in the USA) and David Anderson (at a wedding); and yet hopes were still high and a fifth consecutive win was certainly being targeted. On this day, however, it would have taken a superhuman effort to outrun Newham & Essex Beagles - and all credit to Wells City who operated at full strength to take silver medals. Our own run went a little haywire on stage two but many times were down on expectations and with the Beagles in full cry - maybe it was a good day to have a bad day!
For the first time prize money was available - £250 for the fastest lap with a £100 bonus for breaking the individual course record.
Stage 1
Should we start off with Richard Ward, on his first tour of duty in Rushmoor Arena, or Shugri Omar, fit after a late start to his track season but with no 5k form behind him. We went with the former – and it worked out right. Richard was close to his expected time and 7th place was a solid start – but up front another 1500 metre runner of note was making the early pace and came home in second place – Newham’s Michael East. Stage winner was Poole’s Willard Chinhanhu.
Stage 2
A good run in the previous week’s Bristol Half Marathon cemented Hassan’s place in the team but what we didn’t know was that race day at Rushmoor coincided with the first day of Ramadan and Hassan was fasting. On his initial lap he slipped back and although he tried to respond to encouragement to pick it up over the second circuit, things did not get any better. Instead of moving up a place or two, Hassan found half a dozen men coming past him and he ran a minute slower than we might have thought. We were 13th and a minute and a half off the lead.
Newham had moved ahead by a pace or two from Wells City who were already impressing – the Somerset club were second in 2005 and once again they’d managed to attend Rushmoor Arena with a full strength team. Fastest on the lap was Angus MacLean of Southampton, a second ahead of Kent’s Jermain Mays.
Stage 3
Well, it was all set up for Stephen Sharp with a string of men ahead to pull on. He felt good – but that speedy time didn’t come. Stephen was fastest on the stage but his 18:28 was his slowest on this course and he probably has yet to settle down after a change in coaching regime. Newham’s lesser-known runners were holding up well in front and there was still only a second in it between them and Wells City. Kent were into 3rd but six clubs had fallen to Stephen’s stride and we were back to 7th – although still just over a minute down.
Stage 4
Paul Freary had been clocking up some good times recently and took the precaution of not running the half marathon the previous week. It paid off. He tells us that he’s learned something over the years and that he’s reigning himself in over the early stages of his races these days. Determined to go through the first kilometre no faster than 3 minutes, he nevertheless hit that mark in 2:50 and as a result still felt that he “blew up.” Nevertheless, his tussle with Aldershot’s Ben Moreau resulted in a time only one second slower than his best and, more importantly, took us into 3rd place. Frank Tickner scorched a 17:59 to put Wells 45 seconds ahead but nobody had any thoughts that the race was over, seeing who the Beagles had lined up for their last two stages.
Stage 5
Always our star man, Mark Miles toed the line for stage five but the gaps were too large for us to dream of an advance to silver medals. Moumin Geele for Newham ripped into the Wells’ lead and just less than 18 minutes later moved a step ahead of Adrian Marriott to regain pole position. An isolated Mark pulled back 35 seconds on Marriott and gave us a cushion of a minute and a quarter on AFD. We weren’t going to win but we certainly didn’t want to end up out of the medals.
Stage 6
Mohammed Farah toyed with Wells’ Ben Tickner for a while but then turned on the after-burners to clock an outstanding 17:14 – 7 seconds away from a course record that dates back to 1989. Our own Simon Jones had come down with a cold after the previous weekend’s effort at Bristol where he had felt very sluggish. We had considered taking him out of the line-up but he was intent on putting down some sort of mark to be thrown into the National selection process. Our Skipper gamely took on the job of anchorman for the Bs, ready to switch teams should Simon feel too bad in warm up. As it turned out, and in spite of suffering somewhat, Simon clocked a respectable time and bronze medals became even more secure.
In this qualifier a top twenty-five placing is required to clinch a place on the start line at Sutton Park. Our B team were never lower than that mark and came through strongly to finally place 15th with Newham’s B’s 14th and Aldershot’s 16th.
1 Newham & Essex Beagles 1:49:20; 2 Wells City H 1:50:27; 3 Belgrave H 1:51:48; 4 Aldershot Farnham & D AC 1:53:10; 5 Kent AC 1:54:21; 6 Bedford & County AC 1:54:57; 15 Belgrave H ‘B’ 1:58:47; dnf Belgrave H ‘C’; 91 teams started; 76 teams finished.
A – R Ward (7) 18:31; H Raidi (13) 19:36; S Sharp (7) 18:28; P Freary (3) 18:25; M Miles (3) 18:06; S Jones (3) 18:42.
B – S Omar (13) 18:48; K Hegvold M40 (24) 20:14; M Humphrey (25) 20:42; M Byansi (18) 19:24; P Willis (17) 20:01; W Cockerell (15) 19:38.
C – J Kimaiyo (16) 19:13; J Fairbourn U20 20:56; A Bodin U20 (36) 20:49; W Lynch (41) 21:33; D McMillan M55 27:24.
Fastest: 1 M Farah (Newham &EB) 17:14; 2 A MacLean (T Southampton) 17:41; 3 J Mays (Kent) 17:42; 4 W Chinhanhu (Poole) 17:53; 5 M Geele (Newham &EB) 17:55; 6 M East (Newham &EB) 17:56; 10 M Miles 18:06; 17 P Freary 18:25; =18 S Sharp 18:28.
Restored from the club's earlier website, belgraveharriers.com, and published here as originally written.