Race Report: Essex Road Relay Championships 17/03/2012

As you may well have guessed from the title this is was not a race within the great shire of Cheshire. I now have official dual nationality as a  Cheshire lad and an Essex boy so with that in mind I recently joined forces with Billericay Striders running club my local club down south. I can see it now "Sandbach Striders twinned with Billericay striders", has a certain ring to it.

The club is of a similar size to ours and has the usual friendly members and social side we are all
familiar with. In addition to this they train 3 times a week and have dedicated speed, fartlek and hill sessions to keep us on our toes.

A few weeks ago I was approached by one of the coaches and asked if I would be free to take part in the Essex road relay championships. It turned out that the event was a 4 x 3.5 mile race around the lanes of the newly declared city of Chelmsford. So after a few weeks of intense training including park runs and some speed sessions the day of the race arrived. It was the weekend of mothers days and the rest the Coppenhall had come to Essex for a visit and were going to watch the race.

On arriving at the event I was told that I would be running the 2nd leg taking over from a guy called Jamie who was coming back from injury and I would then pass on the baton to Jerry the coach. Now some of the more mathematically skilled amongst you may have noticed that 1+1+1 does not equal 4, our 4th man had dropped out so Jerry elected to run 2 legs and simply ignore the marshals who would try and pull him out of the race after completing his leg!

So all the first leg runners assembled on the start line and our man Jamie got of to a blinder of a run taking the lead from the off. This was slightly concerning for me as I had no idea of the course so if he came in to hand over to me in 1st place I would have no idea where to go. Somewhat gladly he had been charged down by the time he came in to hand over so at least now I had someone to follow!

Essex yesterday

I took to the course in 6th place and was amongst a pack of three runners   All in close contention. Now the course description is going to be a little vague for several reasons, it was some time ago since the race and, Secondly even though I've lived close to Chelmsford for 3 years now I had pretty much no clue as to where I was running. So here goes, we started off in the city before heading off along the back roads and lanes towards Writtle. The course was quite undulating and on one particular stretch of back road was incredibly exposed to the wind which slowed us all down a bit. The two chaps ahead of me pulled out a bit of a lead which was annoying along the windy lanes as I kept losing sight of them which turned the race into more of a mental challenge as I had to keep reminding myself that as I did not know the course I was in no position to drop down a few gears and sprint to the end. So I held my pace and was doing ok right up to the point when out of nowhere I had a runner on my shoulder, I swear he had access to a Tardis as I have no idea where he came from, the race was back on. We battled pretty hard for the next mile or so as I used him to pace me hoping that he knew the course and had judged this as the right time to kick. As we turned a corner I saw the kids climbing frame which I had seen from the start line and new we were approaching the end of the lap, we both kicked but he had the legs on me and held me off till the end.

One of the early pacemakers

I handed the race over to Jerry and he set off to run his 2 laps hoping that the officials had short term memory loss. He did a good first lap and as he ran through the concourse to start his second lap shielding his face from the officials we were still in 7th place. He did a negative split on his last lap and we held our place. Individually we all did good times, personally mine was 20:31 not bad seeing as people had mapped the course at 3.7 rather than the advertised 3.5 miles. Now for the sad news the officials (boo, hiss, and insert your own obscenities here) had disqualified us as for some reason they seemed to think that you needed 4 individual runners for the event. So all in all Southend won the event and we had come in 7th before being dishonourably discharged. A great little event to get all the clubs in Essex together and competing against each other.

Goodbye from Essex, see you all soon for pacemaking on Jason's new speed training sessions.

Chris