An informal decision was made to put York Acorn back on the map of the big regional relays and it seemed a natural progression to enter a team for the Leeds Country Way Relay after our success at the Cleveland Way Relay. Read Jerry’s report hot off the press here:
As the only team outside of the Leeds area, and following a three-year break, it was always going to be tough to make a come back. The idea was to give newcomers a flavour of recceing/running the race as experience to put us in good stead for future years.
In the weeks leading up to the relay some of our star runners Andy Hilton, Steve Simpson and Martin Perry unfortunately found themselves on the injury bench. However, Andy Normandale, Steve Mummery and Jerry Barnes were all on hand as reserves and after a bit of juggling we still had a strong team.
It was a beautiful sunny day and conditions were generally good for running as Andrew Nesom and Chris Judge set off from Garforth Sports’ Centre at 8.00 am to run the first leg to Stanley in Wakefield. They had a strong run and finished in an admirable seventh place to pass to Piran White and Paul Goble who stormed through on a long, hilly leg to Batley. Piran and Paul had moved us to a very respectable fourth place and were one of the fastest pairings. They passed to Matthew Driscoll and Jerry Barnes who tried to keep up the momentum and only dropped one place by the time they had reached Thornbury in a ten mile wooded run with a couple of ‘killer hills’. Two of our strongest runners Mark Metcalfe and Andy Normandale then took over on another tough leg. However, due to a small navigational error towards Golden Acre Park we had dropped to seventh place. Another strong coupling in Mark Dowson and Chris Alder also had a navigational hiccup at the end of their lap near Thorner which cost ten minutes and by the time they had arrived at Thorner triangle we were down to ninth place. Martin Nice and Steve Mummery were targeted with 70 minutes for the last leg back to Garforth and that is exactly what they did in a close battle with Rothwell to hold onto ninth position.
A nice pepperpot for all was the memento and it felt good to be back at one of the great local races and one of which we have a good record.
Next year ,the recceing will be better, the team slightly stronger and a top four place awaits us ……
Leeds City came through from 6th to first in last two legs. Recently formed Airedale Athletics Club from Bradford came second overall with Valley Striders placed third.
Report by Jerry Barnes
Sustainance, pics and wheels provided by Carol (see below)!
David Bailey has no need to worry! Here are a few pics that really do not do any justice at all to the huge amount of effort these guys put into the relay yesterday in the name of Acorn… I cannot believe how much stress they put on themselves by running in a high profile team event and they all did it so admirably. Well done to all:
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