SEAA Men's 4x5k Cross-country Relay, Wormwood Scrubs

Alan Mead writes:- Still struggling to get off the ground, this event hasn't yet attracted the number of entries in the senior age groups one would expect for an area championship but in the four times the race has been held Belgrave have supported it well and slowly the numbers rise.

Richard Ward dropped a bombshell before the race started: “Bad news Alan, I had to bin my lucky shorts this morning. They weren’t decent any longer!” As they had seen him through much of his career this was quite a blow – but we decided to soldier on as best we could.

Clapham Chaser Andy Maud ripped it up on stage 1, to set the day’s fastest, while the Cockerpillar got his legs turning over at a fair old speed to nudge inside 15 minutes for 12th; so it wasn’t quite 5k then! Holding on to Will for a good deal of the lap Sam Shore gave the B squad a handy start and as he handed over to Roy Maddams – and Roy’s on a meteoric upward trend at the moment and ran out of his socks – we had the unusual sight of the ‘B’s coming in one place down on the ‘A’s for whom Wardy was definitely out of s[h]orts. Four places fell to Paskar as he ran the fourth fastest time of the day and another three were dispatched by Mike Trees, the latter all set now for a crack at the World M50 5000m title in Brazil.

1 Bedford & County AC 57:54; 2 Newham & Essex Beagles 58:24; 3 Aldershot F& AC 59:36; … 5 Belgrave H 1:00:00; … 15 Belgrave H ‘B’ 1:04:40; … 34 teams started, 29 teams finished.

A team: W Cockerell (12) 14:59; R Ward (12) 15:54; P Owor (8) 14:09; M Trees M50 (5) 14:58.

B team: S Shore (18) 16:16; R Maddams (13) 15:08; K Hegvold M50 (13) 16:08; R Norville (15) 17:08.

Fastest: A Maud (Clapham C) 13:50; C Hartley (Thames Valley H) 14:02; J Eves (Bedford & County AC) 14:04; 4 P Owor (Belgrave) 14:09.

Restored from the club's earlier website, belgraveharriers.com, and published here as originally written.