A poor turnout at the South of England Road Relays saw Hillingdon AC finish down the results in both the Veteran and Senior Men’s competitions reports Paul Leppard. With many athletes who would normally be pushing for a place in the A teams unavailable to compete, the Senior Men’s team recorded their worst performance at these championships since at least 2002, finishing in 50th place out of 80 teams, 30 places down on last year’s finishing position. The Vet 40 Mens team finished 19th out of 25 teams, the Vet 50 team 16th out of 17 teams, whilst Alan Butler and John Bignell ran the first two legs of an incomplete Vet 40 B team.
However, just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, it must be hoped that the club sees an upturn in performance over the remainder of the road and cross country season with athletes making themselves available to compete in the remaining priority fixtures, starting with the Met League at Woodford on Saturday 19 October.
Just as important, the contribution of those athletes that did compete at the SEAA Road Relays should be recognised with a hight level of effort and application displayed by those athletes that took themselves out of their comfort zone to test themselves against some of the best athletes in the South of England. James Laing had another good run over the undulating 6km course, recording 19.24 to take the Senior Men’s team to 35th position after the first leg, James Manley acquited himself well on a difficult second leg despite suffering from a stitch on the second lap, Chris Ingram and Ed Campbell both ran hard on their returns to competative action following injury, there was a promising debut at these championships from Chris Woolley and Martin Bateman finished off the team with a strong final leg, just failing to duck under 20 minutes with a 20:02 clocking.
Full results of all the competitions are here.
It is far better to have tried and failed, than to have never tried at all! M.B.
