Belgrave women came second in the south of England 6-stage road relays at Milton Keynes, with Sarah Astin taking the gold medal for fastest long leg of the day.

After few mishaps the Belgrave men fell short of their top 5 target in the 12-stage relay, but their 13th place finish saw them comfortably qualify for the National 12-stage in Birmingham in a fortnight.

Belles

The road relays are always one of our favourite occasions in the racing calendar, but Sunday must have been one of the best days ever for the Belles, writes TM Charlie Dickinson.

l-r: debutant Naomi Lenane, Olivia Papaioannou, Jess Saunders, Grace Richardson, Sarah Astin, Steph Hewitt.

In fact, the only disappointment was the weather. After a warm week of clear blue skies we were greeted in Milton Keynes with damp, overcast and chilly conditions; the sun only broke through on the long journey home. Thankfully, John Mather had brought the marquee up in his taxi which provided some warmth and shelter.

The organisers had also changed the usual course, extending the long leg to well over 8km, so all comparisons with previous years went out of the window. The women run long legs on stages 2 and 4 and the other four legs are almost exactly 5km - but because of the undulations, twists, and turns, any times around or under 18 minutes are very good. In past races the only Belgrave runner to have done this was Tish Jones's 16:52 (on a course about 50m longer than this one) in 2014.

For the first time ever, the Belles had three complete teams of six, and they all made a very good start on the frenetic first leg. Many teams put their strongest runners first, particularly if they don't have a strong six (the fastest short leg of the day, Bedford’s T Wilson, ran on leg 1). Grace Richardson made the best possible start for the 'A' team finishing in 9th place and well under 18 minutes. The very promising 17-year-old Maddy Whitman led off the 'B' team very sensibly finishing well in the top 20, a few places ahead of Laura Goodson for the 'C' team in 22nd.

Jess Saunders is one of several in the team who contracted Covid just over a month ago. She proved that she is almost back to her best with a very strong second leg in just over 32 minutes. In the ‘B’ team Patricia Walker ran a stormer puller her team up four places. Lizzie Goldie-Scot also had a very solid run for the 'C' team, leaving them in 23rd place.

Then Steph Hewitt took three places for the 'A' team to move them up to 8th with another fast run, just one place ahead of Alix Vermeulen - in probably her best run in claret son far, both just over 18 minutes. Belles’ captain Mhairi Hall, only a year on from a major hip operation and with very little recent mileage because of work, still managed a very respectable time for the 'C' team to gain another two places. She is such a fierce competitor.

Sarah Astin setting out on the fastest long leg of the day.

So, with three legs to go, the Belles 'A' team were in eighth place. But this all changed on the long leg four with a terrific run from Sarah Astin who not only pulled the team up to fourth, but now well in sight of the second and third placed teams. Last week Sarah had run 33:20 for 10km, so it was no surprise that her leg was the fastest of the whole day. Flora Whyte and Ella-May Hards both ran very good long legs for the 'B' and 'C' teams, maintaining their positions.

Olivia Papaioannou was flying before Christmas, but then contacted Covid and it has taken her some time to get back to her best. She ran an outstanding short leg in 17:32, quickly overtaking the two women in front of her to bring the 'A' team up to second place with a significant lead over AFD in third. New member Anna Price also had a brilliant debut running under 18 minutes to bring the 'B' team up to 9th. It was so good to see club President Fiona Maddocks still running and supporting the team after many years, and thanks to her the 'C' team were now 20th.

Naomi Lenane with a medal-winning debut for the club.

With one leg to go, could another new member, Naomi Lenane finish the 'A' team off with a medal? Naomi had run an excellent 35th in the Inter-Counties a couple of weeks before competing in the Surrey gold medal winning team but had injured her foot and had not been able to train much since. However, with a recent low 17:20 5km PB, she ran very sensibly and easily completed the task in under 18 minutes, cheered on by all the Belgrave men and women at the side of the track as she finished.

It was a very strong 'B' team with another recent Covid sufferer, Alice Reed taking one more place and finishing their team in an excellent 8th place. Cat Hall did likewise for the 'C' team which meant all three teams finished within the top 20 out of 33 teams who started the race. The team's very strong depth was illustrated by having a total of seven members running under 18:20 (including four sub-18:00) for the 5km leg.

Results

Fastest short leg: T. Wilson, (Bedford), 16:18. Fastest Long Leg: S. Astin, (Belgrave), 29:05.

Bels

As delighted as we were to see the return of the Southern 12-stage for the first time since 2019, we came to Milton Keynes expecting a lot more than the 13th place we left with.

It still means progression to the Nationals in a fortnight but it’ll go down as one of those days where a lot of things went weird.

We’d lost five men - three from the A, two from the B - to Covid in the week before the race, comfortably ahead of the already impressive 1 in 20 rate enjoyed by the rest of England at the time. A few more lost to circumstance on Friday/Saturday meant our two teams plus reserves was down to one plus seven by Sunday morning, but still with some big guns in the A team, including the tantalising prospect of Nick Goolab’s first race in 12 months.

A-string

Callum Stewart led us off on the first long leg with a goal of bringing us back inside the top 20; his 17th was comfortably ahead of schedule on a leg stacked with quick guys, including Highgater Alex Lepretre’s fastest overall leg of the day.

He handed over to Euan Campbell who’s working his way back to fitness after a long absence but justified his late promotion from the B-team with our third-quickest shot leg on the day. Despite so many teams front-loading, we bled only one place before handing over to TM Arne Dumez who’d made the long trip down from Middlesbrough to fill a gap in the team. Arne wasn’t delighted with his run on this tricky course but it was still a valuable contribution. Ever-improving Ewan Somerville took over in 22nd but did superbly to climb to 19th by the time he re-emerged from a short leg that was only one second slower than that of Euan with a U.

Fifth runner Henry Hart had warned us that he was still feeling a little sluggish after a 58k ultra a fortnight earlier and in hindsight we should have heeded that warning. His long leg here was at least two minutes slower than his abilities deserve, dropping us to 23rd and leaving poor Henry cowering in the tent reconsidering every life decision that led to this point. Lessons learned all round!

On the subsequent short leg a spritely Jonny Neville made back all but one of those lost places with our second-quickest mark of the afternoon.

Nick Goolab endured a lonely long leg but we were so glad to see him back racing.

But by now we were in 20th, around 10 places worse off than where we’d hoped to be. Here we’d planned to unleash the Gebreselassie-Wallis-Goolab power trio to do some real damage on the top 10 and leave our last three runners fighting to hold on to medal places.

But we’d left Sam Gebreselassie a bit too isolated and despite running the fourth fast long leg of the stage, by now the race was so stretched that it only gained us two spots. Dan Wallis gained us another two places but was about a minute slower than he’d have liked after a week of illness and a freak gym accident. It’s never been clearer: runners, stay away from the weights. It was then over to Nick Goolab to make his first competitive appearance for just shy of a year. His 25:49 was the 9th quickest long leg overall but was a lonely one, climbing only three places to 13th.

Conall McNally about to munch through a couple of places before shedding them again in almost unbelievably fashion.

Then came one of the more bizarre legs we’ll see at a relays: Conall McNally, in probably the best 5k shape of his life, flew out of the cage and immediately overtook runners from Norwich and Woodford Green as they headed up the hill towards the petrol station. Your correspondents waited in the same position by the football pitches to count them back in again…and in came Norwich runner. Weird. Then the Woodford Green guy. Worrying. Another minute passed before we saw Connall again - a relief that he hadn’t been hit by a bus, but concerning all the same. Turned out Conall had taken a wrong turn about two thirds into his leg and it had added around 450m or 90 seconds to his time. Conall was gutted, we were perplexed, but took solace in the fact that ultimately it counted for nothing more than a few positions in the teens rather than any lost medals.

Then James Fox ran a really gutsy but mainly isolated 11th leg to peg us back to 13th before handing over to Nick Buckle to run what was comfortably our quickest short leg of the day which all the more remarkable for not seeing a single soul the whole way. Brilliant.

James Fox contributed an excellent long leg.

B-string

What had been three full teams a week earlier was sadly reduced to just one and a half by the time we boarded the bus - Covid and injury (and a couple of mother’s day double bookings) accounted for that. Nevertheless it was a decent day out with a spot of running for the B-boys, including first legger Brad Courtney-Pinn who tempoed around as part of his comeback from a marathon malaise. Steve Gardner, Scott Mills and Will Cockerell chipped in with short legs; Rob Kelly, Val Rigori and James Morris on the long legs made it seven runners out in our second string and were in 40th by the time we ran out of men.

Belles take silver at Southern 6-stage relays, Bels advance to Nationals

Belles

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