Summer Relays 5 - Canterbury - Tuesday 5 July 2011
... Final Road Relay at Canterbury in 2011 Series not dampened by steady drizzle
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The last of 5 annual East Kent Road Relays took place in the drizzle of a summer's evening in Canterbury - the course + start-finish area was set up by Team Manager Tom Purnell who also found time to run the anchor leg for the Senior Men's B team and bring us home 3rd of the B teams on the night. On the opening lap, Kieran Reilly (u-20) gave the Men's "A" team a 30-second advantage when recording the fastest lap of the day, just 1 second ahead of training partner Luke Dawson (u-17) himself opening for the "B" team with 2nd fastest lap of the day. Sam Hudson (u20) and Andy Cope ran 10th and 18th fastest individual laps holding off the determined chase by fellow title challengers, Ashford AC and they gave Chris Holmes a slender 6 seconds lead on the anchor leg - Chris ran strongly to convert the winning margin on the day to 42 seconds and the two clubs each end the campaign on 35 points with IEK narrow winners as they are 3-2 up, on head-to-head countback. |
The Men's B team was a mixed bag : v-40 Peter Bowell and Sophie Willington (14th fastest woman on the day) running legs 2 & 3, handing over to Senior Man Tom Purnell, ahead of the "A" teams of Dover and Thanet. The Men's C team saw debut runs from Ashley Paine (1st year u-15) on leg 1 and Gavin Knight on leg 4 - Barry Hopkins was fastest in this team with vet-40 Michael Gallyer Barnett (a seasoned campaigner with one relay already under his belt) posting 78th fastest time of the 114 runners in the Men's teams Our vet-40 Men have had a season-long battle with the "other" Ashford club (Ashford & District Road Running Club) both, in races and also for the points, Ashford finishing the season 4-1 up on countback. Rob Whittaker opened with 2nd fastest vet-40 lap and gave us a 3 second lead - Martin Kelk & Tim Sutton ran 5th & 7th fastest v-40 laps with Steve Burt's anchor lap (only 1 second short of Tim's) bringing the team home just 13 seconds adrift of title winners Ashford & D |
with Canterbury Harriers in 3rd
Our Senior Women contested their 2nd relay of this season in style - Beth Burnett and Rebecca Weston (both u-20) opened with Beth 5th of 10 competing clubs on leg 1 - Rebecca stormed round into the lead with the 3rd fastest female lap giving Helena Penfold a massive 42-second advantage over league leaders Folkestone RC - Helena's fastest female lap of the day increased the winning margin to no less than 2mins 22 seconds, inflicting the only defeat this season on title winners, Folkestone RC. |