SLOW
finish close 2nd in North Downs Way Relay
Saturday 16 June 2007
This race is an annual relay, which has been running since the late 70s, run
along the entire length of the North Downs Way – starting with the first leg
from Dover at 5:30am, comprising 16 legs in total, and finishing in Farnham at
around 8:00pm.
After 123 miles of rain,
mud, sunshine and hills, the SLOW team were just pipped to the post by
Guildford Orienteers, by the narrowest of margins – finishing just 40 seconds
behind Guildford’s winning time of 16 hours 33 minutes 41 seconds (that’s 0.07%
!!).
Guildford were actually
ahead of us all day, and the closest we ever reached was the final 40-second
margin. After 15 legs the Guildford team
had built a lead of over 14 minutes, but on the final leg from Puttenham to
Farnham, a very strong run by Paul Nixon (just 8 seconds outside the all-time
leg record), and a crippling stitch that held Kath Denton back in the middle of
the run, had both teams biting their nails as the minutes ticked away at the
finish in Farnham. Luckily for
Guildford, Kath managed to pull through the stitch and crossed the line with
just 40 seconds to spare.
SLOW had a number of
excellent runs during the day, and as well as Paul’s win on the final leg we
also had leg wins by Owen Lindsell (leg 3), Simon Evans (leg 4), Ed Catmur (leg
6), Mike Garvin (leg 11), Mark Vyvyan-Robinson (leg 13) and Mike Farmery (leg
14).
SLOW also had a
half-team running the 2nd half of the race only – in the 2nd half our teams
finished 1st and 4th.
Thanks to everyone for
running, and especially to Andy Robinson and Richard & Ginny Catmur for
timekeeping, and Sarah Covey-Crump for hosting the early runners on Friday
night.
North
Downs Way Relay page (GO website)
Posted 18 June 2007