North East Masters Road Relay Championships, Jarrow, 30th April

I think that this is a very grand sounding event, but in reality “Masters” means “Veterans” and “Road” means a tarmac path around a park in Jarrow.  Still it was a good evening, well organised and friendly competition as it should be.  Although the results are  published and prizes are awarded in age group categories, there are two races.  There are 3 per team and each runner runs 2 laps of approximately 1500m each.  The course is slightly undulating but with no real hills, though there are 3 or 4 sharp turns to slow you down a bit.  It was much chillier than for Monday night’s handicap but not a bad night for running.

The first race was for the ladies and over-65 men and Claremont Ladies were represented by Nina Jensen, Mary Martin and Marie Slack, while our old men were Ben Hull, Graham Leslie and Bill Milbourne.  The girls put in a steady performance but an excellent run by the gadgies saw them win the Mens’ Over 65 race by some distance.  Well done!

In the second race, Claremont had an over-35s team of David Devennie, Howard Maclennan and Jamie Harding, whilst the Over 55s were represented by me, Kenny McCormick and Alasdair Wilson Craw.  I thought that the two teams would be fairly evenly matched and so it proved with Alasdair chasing down Jamie on the last leg to claim a narrow victory for the oldies!

The full results are finally available. Claremont Ladies were 9th in the 35-44 category, though I think we had a couple of over age team members! In the mens race, the Claremont teams were 17th and 4th in the 35-44 and 55-64 categories respectively.

Full results can be found here.