Sutton Park, Birmingham, Saturday 17th October 2009
It was a changed team that travelled to Birmingham on Saturday for the National Road Relay championships. Four of the team that qualified from the Southern made way to give the Brighton team a young-ish feel with an average age of 24!
Matt Bristow took on the first leg finishing in a time of 19:06 for the 5.8k, a bit outside his best but a solid run for 64th place. James (Macca) McCarthy on leg two flew round to run the fastest leg by a Brighton runner with 18:41 to move the team to 55th. Andrew Donno was next up and running despite a tight quad still managed 19:50 and only dropped two places. Dan Titheradge may have been rueing his decision to train with the sprinters at Oxford University on Thursday night, a painful leg of 21:34 left us in 68th place. Luke Lambourne ran leg 5 and put in a solid performance given his recent exploits cycling around Europe, the time was 20:10 and the position was 65th.
Mo Farah was also on this leg running for Newham his 16:33 was the quickest of the day. On the final leg Howard Bristow probably ran the hardest of all of the Brighton runners, setting off with real intent he didn’t slow down and brought the team up to 59th with a 19:41 effort.
All in all a good day out and a good performance given the changes to the team. We were pretty much down to our last six runners so well done to the guys. Next up for the Senior Men and U20s is the Sussex League Cross Country at Goodwood on Saturday (24 October, 2:35pm).