After a difficult period leading up to the Royston Sunday League race we had a last minute change of venue to a farm in the village of Barley. Instead of the iconic hill-fest on Royston Heath we had the delights of fairly flat farm tracks. It was beautiful Autumn morning. We were low on numbers for a range of reasons but if we are to challenge we must do something to reverse this trend. The women were actually not too bad for numbers and very good at the faster end of the range.

I will be very surprised if the women haven’t got a win. They were very close at Hoddesdon a couple of weeks ago and had a significantly stronger team this time. From what I have seen in photos I think our scoring team would have been Jen Baird, Alex Baird, Anja Greenwood, Kat Alpe and Anna Sikorska. As all of our runners are vets I don’t think there is any doubt about winning the vet competition. Special mention goes to Kat for running just a few days after being knocked off her bike and having significant damage and arm in a sling when not actually running.

The guys struggled for a full team and I think when the results come out they will be a bit down the table. My guess at our scoring team, not necessarily in this order, could be Ben Allen, David Kunzmann, Scott Aiken, Francis Mannion, Mark Holloway, Paul Ward, Robert Sikorski, John Rose. All the other non-scoring runners, men and women, did a great job. Special mention for Ben Allen, who two weeks ago ran the double header, then last week had a storming marathon in Amsterdam, and then this week had a fantastic run to finish third overall.

Thanks also go to Angelica, who also ran Amsterdam Marathon, took the camera and took some great photos which are up on the Club Photo Gallery. Chris, as she often does managed recording of our finishers and was assisted by ben Allen after he crossed the finish line.