Belles

Belgrave women’s teams finish 4th, 8th and 15th

The Belles again showed their tremendous strength in depth with three teams of six racing in the South of England Road Relays at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a new venue for the race. The 'A' team very narrowly missed a medal by just two seconds, a very strong 'B' team finished ahead of all the other 'B' teams, and the Belles 'C' team was the only one to finish and beat many 'A' and 'B' teams from other clubs. 38 complete teams finished the race.

It was a cool blustery day and the 2.4km circuit required two laps for the short stages and three for the longer stage. This made it rather difficult to follow the progress of the race. There were many people out walking in the park too which at times proved a hindrance, especially towards the end of the race. A huge thanks to Mhairi Hall who acted as the women's Team manager for the day and did an excellent job. It was also good to see Leo Coy over from Ireland supporting the club as he so often does.

'A' team

Steph Hewitt led off for the 'A' team nicely sitting with a group on the first lap. The teams spread out on the second lap, but Steph finished strongly to bring the team home in 6th place. Liv Papaioannou took over on the longer second leg, dropping a few places to finish in 10th. Lea Adamson had a very strong run on the next short stage pulling up four places. The team were now 6th.

The fourth stage was long, and Kristina Popadich produced her finest race for the club with an outstanding run gaining another two places. Kristina's was the fourth fastest long stage of the day. Anna Sharp maintained fourth place on her run although the gaps to the second and third place teams, Aldershot and Herne Hill, were now over a minute.

On the final stage, Georgia Curry had what seemed to be the hopeless task of catching the two teams ahead of her. She produced a terrific run, the second fastest short stage of the day and closed to an agonising two seconds from third-placed Aldershot and just 12 seconds from the silver medallists, Herne Hill at the end.

'B' team

Laura Goodson has struggled with her form since contracting flu in the winter but here she produced an excellent confidence-boosting first leg bringing the team home in 12th place. Lizzie Goldie-Scot has had her best winter for several years and it was no surprise to see her running strongly on the second long stage to gain a place. Zoe MacDonald has only recently joined the club and has been regularly attending training sessions and building her fitness. In this, her first race for a while, she gained three places and showed her excellent potential.

Belgrave president Samantha Amend has had and injury and illness hit winter but came along as she always does to support the team despite her lack of fitness. In the circumstances, this was a remarkable run maintaining 8th place and pulling ahead of the teams behind. Natalie Beadle is another with a fine winter behind her. Both she and Ella-May on the final stage had very isolated runs, but they did more than enough to bring the team home in an outstanding 8th position.

'C' team

Belgrave were the only club to finish three complete teams on the day. This was thanks to Sarah Dewhirst and Ellen Erskine who both kindly agreed to step in to fill the gaps. Sarah Riceman set the team going on the first leg. She has been suffering from a hip injury the latter part of the winter and so it's good to see her back racing again. She ran well in that frenetic first leg coming home in 20th place.

It was good to see Daniella Maggs running in a team race for the first time and she did well on the second long stage, running just over 28 minutes. Phoebe Davies made her debut run too and gained no less than five places on the third stage. The team were now 16th. Emily Bradley has recently smashed her pb for 10km, so it was no surprise to see her running a time just a shade quicker than Daniella, 28 minutes dead.

Finally, Sarah and Ellen on the final two short stages running similar times and between them gaining another place, finished in 15th out of 38 teams.

Results

Teams

1. TVH 1:59;56, 2. HHH 1:59;56,3. AFD 2:00;06, 4. Belgrave 'A' 2:00;08,.... 8. Belgrave 'B' 2:06;18,...15. Belgrave 'C' 2:12;13.

Individual legs

BELGRAVE 'A'; 1. Steph Hewitt 17:12 (6), 2. Liv Papaioannou 27:09 (10), 3. Lea Adamson 16:45 (6), 4. Kristina Popadich 24:59 (4), 5. Anna Sharp 17:41 (4), 6. Georgia Curry 16:18 (4).

BELGRAVE 'B'. 1. Laura Goodson 17:50 (12), 2. Lizzie Goldie-Scot 26:42 (11), 3. Zoe MacDonald 17:24 (8), 4. Samantha Amend 27:06 (8), 5. Natalie Beadle 17:56 (8), 6. Ella-May Hards 19:17 (8).

BELGRAVE 'C'. 1. Sarah Riceman 18:26 (20), 2. Daniella Maggs 28:04 (21), 3. Phoebe Davies 18:31 (16), 4. Emily Bradley 28:00 (16), 5. Sarah Dewhirst 19:47 (16), 6. Ellen Erskine 19:22 (150).

Bels

A rock solid men’s team improved on last year’s 13th despite a mid-race injury setback.

‘A’ team

Sam Gebreselassie was the first Bel to test out the brand new southern relay course at the Olympic Park, completing the 7.2k, 3-lap trip for us in just under 22 minutes and handing over to in-form Sam Sommerville in 9th. Our second Sam, his first road relay as a first-claim Belgravian, gave us the team’s fastest short leg of the day and kept us in contention in 10th.

Recent signing Oli Prior made his team debut for us with our third quickest long leg to hold on to 10th spot. The U23 showed oodles of promise with a confident, assured run.

Fin Dyer, another U23, also made good on some excellent winter form, gaining us one place with another classy leg.

Fin handed over to debutant Matt Merrick for what was surely our run of the day. Now coached by Josh Trigwell (more on him later), Matt’s form was unknown having not race since June 2022. But he has pedigree: 3:52 / 14:27 over 1500 / 5000 - and it showed with our quickest long leg of the day to gain us a further two places.

Matt Merrick with the men’s run of the day.

Now in 7th and climbing well, Lloyd Kempson took over with the hope of climbing ever closer to the podium positions. Unfortunately his hamstring had other ideas, pinging 400m into the 4.8k and leaving Lloyd to limp round 3 minutes slower than he’d planned. We were down to 12th but grateful that Lloyd made it round at all.

Josh Trigwell took over for the next long leg in fairly rusty form having not trained due to illness since the Podium 5k at Battersea in February. But his 23:17, our fourth quickest long leg, bled only one place and kept us in contention for the top 10.

Our next short legger, Oli Smith, was another making his team race debut after a winter transfer from Southampton. He pulled a cracking run out of the bag to gain three places, our biggest climb of the day, and guarantee his spot in the team for the nationals.

Matthew Holman, deep in marathon mileage, kept us steady and lost only two places on his long leg, before Rob Kelly claimed one back on his subsequent short leg.

James Fox ran a good last long leg to gain another place and leave us in 10th, where skipper Conall McNally would stay for an entire lonely anchor leg. All the more reason to celebrate his second quickest short leg of the day - a gutsy solo effort the whole way.

‘B’ team

After a few late dropouts in the week the B team was always going to be a hairy affair without an on-course reserve, and so it proved to be when our 12th legger called in sick with the wrong type of runs. Decent runs throughout meant we climbed as high as 31st by leg 10 (only six places off nationals qualification) and were in 34th when our final runner, James Preston, completed our 11th leg. Steve Gardner ran the quickest long leg for the Bs, and Nick Buckle, still nursing an ankle injury from cross country season, ran an excellent short leg that would have been very much at home in our A string.

Men’s results

Aldershot were comfortable overall winners, calling up internationals Jack Rowe, Ellis Cross and Stephen Scullion a few days out from the competition.

Belgrave strength on show as 12/6-stage relay debuts at Olympic Park