The Men’s Race

In many ways, for us these were the Tom Halloway Memorial Spring Road Relays. Sending Striders teams to this event was Tom’s idea in the first place, and he pushed it and made it happen. Without him none of us would have been there last year or this. It was also his last race for the club before moving on to Rotherham Harriers.

So it was fitting that Tom was on leg 1, leading out the men’s A team. And what better way to start than at 15-minute 5k pace? Some doubted whether even the pink arm-warmers could help him maintain that for 7.7k, and they were right to, as he finished at 20-minute 5k pace having massively over-cooked it. He’d put so much time in the bank early on that this still averaged out to a strong time, faster than he’d managed last year. But he’d done it in the hardest way imaginable.

Tom had set us up in 44th place. The goal—and we were desperate to do this—was to finish in the top 25, to qualify for the Nationals and send a team there for the first time since 1992. So there was work to do, but we knew from experience we’d have more depth than a lot of teams, so there was no panic.

Leg 2 saw Steve Canning run one of the legs of the day, destroying our fastest short leg time from last year by 24 seconds, and gaining 8 places. Yes, he was wearing Vaporflys, but he’s in amazing form and it can’t all have been down to them.

Stuart Carrack and new boy Stephen Schubeler followed Steve, and ran solid legs and moved us up another place, putting us in 35th. Still not quite where we wanted to finish, but we weren’t out of it yet either.

Joe Sweetnam-Powell, another new signing but familiar to many—if you’ve ever run Hillsborough Parkrun then he probably won it—had our next long leg. His was our fastest long leg, with a far more dignified and controlled fade than Tom’s. The field was starting to spread out now, but this was still enough to gain us another couple of places. Then Liam Turner took three more with a blistering short leg. Between them, they’d put us back in the game.

Ben Jones had our final long leg next, and laid some demons from last year to rest by running a massive minute-and-a-half quicker than he did then. It’s a mark of the quality of the field that Ben, who won Fastest Jones at the Anglesey HM a month ago (yes, that was a real prize), was only the 5th fastest Jones in the road relays. (I was the slowest of 3 Holts, but that’s normal so tells us nothing.)

Andy Norton put in another beast of a leg next, moving us up to 27th place. Striders supporting track-side had started counting runners through at this point to work out where we were, and the tension was rising. Sam Brown and James Fulcher managed to claw back another place to put us 26th, and halve the minute plus gap to the team ahead, but with two legs to go we knew we were just the wrong side of the qualification line. It was looking touch-and-go whether we’d make it.

At this point, let me introduce you to Kristoff Boynton, Steel City Striders’ best-kept secret. On paper, he’s arguably the fastest runner in the club. He doesn’t really do endurance; he’s built for speed: a 3.85k blast is perfect for him. But he’s had problems with injuries so can’t train much, so mostly sticks to football. He hadn’t raced for nine months, but as part of Project Nationals, at a secret facility out in Rother Valley, we’ve been overhauling and recommissioning him. He hadn’t been tested in a live environment yet, so we didn’t know quite what we were going to get, but he was on leg 11, and his moment had come.

Kristoff absolutely crushed it. He took us past Warrington, who we’d been tracking closely for 90 minutes since their Nick Jones (the day’s Fastest Jones) had passed us on leg 5, and overtook Sunderland Harriers too. Watching him run up the drag to the finish, space and time seemed to bend around him. He produced our fastest short leg of the day, from nowhere, leaving us in a qualification spot with a cushion behind us. It was heroic stuff.

It fell to Rob Bishop to finish the job off. Warrington tried to come back at us, but Rob was too strong and they fell short by 7 seconds. In any case an unfortunate injury to the final Darlington runner had given us another place, and with a disqualification of a team ahead of us to come, we’d managed 22nd of 65 overall. Job done. The Nationals dream had become reality.

All that was left was to cheer in the men’s B team. Tom King deserves a special mention here: he had perhaps the toughest gig of the day on leg 1 for the men’s B team, but turned in a time fit for an A team long leg. Matt Rimmer rediscovered his form from last year too, running the team’s fastest short leg. Overall, over 3 hours and 45 minutes, the B team was within a couple of minutes of last year’s A team’s time. A more than creditable performance.

Men’s A Team: 22nd in 3:32:46

Leeds City were first in 3:06:43, over five minutes ahead of City of Sheffield who took 2nd. Full results are here.