Bels mine more silver, the gold will come...

When the Belgrave TM bumped into his old comrade Bruce Harrold at registration, it was felt that the Dorking TM may reminisce on our trip to Wembley together to see the Dons thrillingly rise in the play-offs to Div one, or perhaps to say he’ll be back in the Kingsmeadow training group soon where he’s been such a feature.  But no, Bruce was all business as he waved his declaration sheet – “reckon you’ve got this covered?  Strongest we have at our disposal…”  It was a hot quartet and was clearly going to give us big trouble.  But you know what?  If I had the choice between a vintage duel like this [albeit getting a tanned backside for our trouble], or cruising to a 4 minute drama free win, I’d probably take the former.  At this level, that is!

This is after all the entertainment business, and as at the Scrubs, there was enough here for all adrenaline junkies.  We set about our task with Alex Mills who gets fitter by the week and carried out his mission of giving Phil Wicks a scent of the prey, to perfection.  A minute back was what we wanted, and 65 secs and 4^th was what we got.  Phil was up against the class of Ben Brunswick who creamed a 1:50 800 this summer, but who had to give up 35 secs to our [not so old] warhouse.  Welcome back PW!

More DMV quality came from another sub-2 man, 18-year-old Ewan Bate, but PO was up to the task, by relieving the young pretender of 58 precious seconds, to present a slender 24 second gift to Alex Miller - in rollocking form - but up against the outstanding Luke Caldwell who blasted an incredible 12:54.  Blimey, what a run, one of the best ever round these parts, and as Dorking admitted at the end: “It may be time we thought about entering races other than the Reigate relay.”  And on this evidence, they’d be right!  The team would probably have won the Southern a fortnight ago for instance, as we were only around a minute weaker, and lost here by 1:05.

All credit toDorking and our lads for the great battle, but where were all the rest?  A 6:10 gap to bronze is a tad troubling.

1 Dorking& MV 55:03; 2 Belgrave H 56:08; 3 Walton AC 62:18… 51 teams started, 46finished.

A Mills (4) 14:55; P Wicks (2) 13:21; P Owor (1) 13:25; A Miller (2) 14:27.

"B"  J Morris 17:29.

Fastest:  L Caldwell (DMV) 12:54.