Norman Woodcock Relays, 3rd November 2024
There was a good Claremont turnout for this now well-established relay around Gosforth racecourse, as we had 5 teams for the 3rd consecutive year. It was a dry, overcast and felt a bit chilly after the recent spell of unseasonably mild weather – though none felt the chill more than Mark Anderson who had just returned from Tenerife! The course, a single lap around the ‘ambulance’ road inside the horse racing track, was in good condition with none of last year’s puddles to contend with.
Similar to our Weetslade Relay, this is an event for mixed teams where every team must contain at least one woman. As the Claremont ladies outnumbered the men by 2 to 1, this had little impact on our team selection!
There are always some extremely fast runners in the first leg of a relay race, but Mark Anderson held his own to get our “A” team off to a great start. Relay debutant Jamie Armstrong showed that he could live with the pace too, clocking an excellent sub-10 minute time on the 2.7K loop to be the next sky blue to handover. There was a good contest between Chris Jones and Holly Porter, which Holly won by 3 seconds to set our all-female team on its way.
Holly’s team proved to be the most consistent with only 27 seconds difference between their fastest runner, Sonja Fenske and last minute substitute Aoife Monaghan, who had kindly answered a midnight call to step in for the injured Anton Mirafsari. Aoife still had last week’s Dublin marathon in her legs, but put in a strong performance in less than ideal circumstances!
The lasses’ consistency meant that they were second Claremont team home behind a very impressive run from the “A” team, who kept up the pace following Mark’s fast start. Sarah Kerr ran her usual impressive leg to hand over to Harry Mawdsley. According to his Strava, Harry ran his fastest kilometre, followed by his fastest mile to match Mark in running sub-9 minutes and bring the team home in a more than creditable 9th place.
The rest of us may not be as fast, but I think we were all happy with our morning’s work – especially Lena who clocked a course PB!
| Position | Runners | Time |
| 9 | Mark Anderson Sarah Kerr Harry Mawdsley Team Time | 8:46 10:08 8:44 27:38 |
| 61 | Holly Porter Sonja Fenske Aoife Monaghan Team Time | 11:15 11:11 11:42 34:08 |
| 62 | Jamie Armstrong Lucy Keating Jenny Roberts Team Time | 9:45 12:12 12:33 34:30 |
| 75 | Tom Tinsley Lena Lou Lucy Ward Team Time | 10:42 15:10 12:16 38:08 |
| 80 | Chris Jones Helen Gavillet Rose Hawkswood Team Time | 11:18 16:21 12:44 40:23 |
