Bring it on!

Hurrah! The start of another midweek league season!

Since we got relegated from division 1 last year, and so did Bishops Stortford, we had a chance to re-run last year's most memorable race, this year without the comedy weather. And being in division 2, that should mean that the competition is easier... shouldn't it? It certainly didn't look like that a minute after the start, when a whole swarm of Shaftesbury Barnet men were disappearing off ahead, and a load of Spartans were among them.

We've done the course a few times now, and it was as pleasant this time as before: a narrow road, a track, country roads through a village. The out-and-back course meant most of the marshals could double up, and there was even a drinks station halfway round - by no means expected for a midweek league race.

Until Statto posted this link on the forum, I'd forgotten that the middle loop of the route was so high up, and so there were more hills than I remembered. But we seem to be pretty good with hills in this club - I talked to a few people afterwards, and we all found that we dealt with the hills at least as well as our competitors. All that training really does seem to help!

I was happy with my run, doing a hilly 10k in under 37 minutes. I even saw Steve McKeown cross the finish line, although I suppose that was because we finished with a couple of minutes running round a playing field.

It's worth mentioning the excellent food Bishops Stortford put on for afterwards - loads of sandwiches and cakes, and arranged in such a way that there wasn't even any queuing. Good work!

The results are in now, and they match what our feelings were on the night: Shaftesbury Barnet and Fairlands Valley Spartans had better men's teams than us, but our women are pretty unstoppable - especially with an Astrid-Paula-Melissa 1-2-3 at the front. We could also tell that Shaftesbury Barnet didn't have a women's team. What we didn't know was how close it would be in the end. With the men's and women's scores combined, NHRR and FVS came out level on 'team points', and the fact that women's team is so fantastic meant we just sneak to the top of the table on 'runner points'.

1 North Herts Road Runners 494 12
2 Fairlands Valley Spartans 500 12
3 Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers 750 9
4 Bishops Stortford 676 8
5 Harlow Running Club 684 8
6 Broxbourne Runners 955 5
7 Herts Phoenix 1338 2

So there's a long way to go, but we'll be fine if we carry on like that. We know we were missing a few runners - hopefully we'll be able to get everybody out next time. I'm looking forward to a fortnight's time already!