North West Road Relays

Apologies for the delay in writing this race report.  I have been waiting for the results of the race but they still haven’t come through so will just have to write everything up without knowing the exact results!

When I planned my races leading up to Toronto, it quickly became obvious that there were very few half marathon options.  Bristol and Glasgow were the only quality races and they were on the same weekend so I decided to do Bristol.  Three weeks before the marathon is closer than I would usually run one but it appeared to be the most sensible option and hearing stories of successful athletes of years gone by doing good marathons two weeks after a half reassured me. 

The bigger problem was a final race to do in between the half and the marathon.  Before London, I did a leg of the National 12 Stage the week before and wanted to simulate as best as I could what I did there.  I didn’t want a solo time trial, I wanted a decent race between 5km and 5 miles.  There wasn’t really anything suitable on the weekend of 18/19 September so I originally opted for Cardiff 10k on 12 September.  But Norman said it was a bad idea so soon after Bristol.  I then entered the Victory 5 the following weekend, but again Norman was not keen, insisting the travel to Portsmouth and back before a marathon was a bad idea.  Then I noticed that the North West Relays had been relocated to Leigh Sports Village.  I had originally ruled this out because it had supposed to be at Stockport with a steep downhill on each lap.  Knowing the Sports Village, I knew this would be flat and 3 miles seemed like a good distance.

The North West Relays combines the Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Lancashire county championships.  It is a good event, with many teams using it to select their Northern 6 Stage line ups.  I arrived and immediately saw many familiar faces.  Enjoyed a bit of friendly banter with the Liverpool Harriers lads and then was greeted by Andy who stank like a brewery and looked terrible! 

I had been assigned leg 2 and had expected to have plenty of people to run at.  As it was, our first leg man Nick Leigh rolled back the years with a great run to come in 2nd – just 6secs off the leader.  This meant that I set off with just one runner in front of me – Blackpool’s Jack Scarr.  He has an 8:39 3k this year and did give me something to go at for a mile as he went out quite hard and the gap stayed the same.  My garmin registered a 4:48 first mile which given the twists and turns and the off road sections meant I didn’t panic when the gap didn’t come down.  Into the 2^nd mile, and he started to slow and I very quickly went past and moved away.  Then I just put my head down and ran hard.  I glanced back to see if John McCole was gaining on me and he wasn’t which was encouraging as I knew John was getting back into his best shape.

I felt good throughout and came home in 14:24 for the 3 mile course which I was happy with.  The course was a mix of the car parks and the trails in the sports village.  John timed himself at 14:29.  Stuart Robinson won the first leg in 14:35 and Richard Burney ran 15:10.  They are the only results I know which is frustrating as I’d like to know for sure that I ran the fastest leg. 

The course:

Warming up:

Final mile, still feeling strong and relaxed: