Comrie Relays 14th September

A belated report on the Comrie Relay, which was held in fine, sunny conditions a week past on Sunday. Cat had spent the previous week desparately seeking out runners to make up a team and it looked like she had it all sorted out when Big Brian Brennan pulled out with only 24 hours notice with some namby excuse about pulling his left pinkie, or something like that…let’s hope he gets his fingers back to full fitness soon! To his credit, he sent his pal Paul as stand-in, and an excellent job he did too.

Given the events of the previous few days, we were all a bit subdued; the pre-race banter and build-up was understandably muted.The organisers intimated the terrible news about Simon before a minute’s silence at the start, then we were off.

I had the pleasure of beating my pb on the first stage by about half-an hour, or over 40% improvement; this is certainly a record improvement in my 30 years of racing! It was in small part due to a reasonably decent run by my own modest standards. However I have to admit that the primary reason for my pb was simply that I managed to not get lost this time round!!!!!

Unfortunately, I had to dash off to the airport immediately after my stage so cannot comment too much about the other three stages. All things considered though, given that none of our big guns were out, I think our 10th place was rather commendable.

Paul and John Hamer did the steep second stage in a respectable time of just over an hour, Steffen flew round the long third leg and it looks like Cat is coming back to some good form and had a great run on the final stage. Hopefully they can fill in the blanks on the rest of the day..

Times

Dave 54:08

John & Paul 60:50

Steffen 73:13

Cat 62:49

Overall position: 10th/26 teams.