Race Date: Saturday 1st April 2023
Race Report by: Yasmine Chaffer

On the 1st April, a team of 6 lady striders made a journey up to Redcar to take part in the Northern Athletics 6 & 12 stage road relays. The team comprised of Abbie Pearse, myself (Yasmine Chaffer), Katie Gill, Caroline Brock, Gillian Allen and Hannah Mainprize.

The best way to describe the weather conditions on the day is bleak – very grey, very cold, light rain, and worst of all – windy. Not ideal for a race right on the North Sea coast line. Nevertheless, we put our shorts and vests on and gave it our best shot, coming in 12th out of 37 teams – which apparently is the best ever placing for our club at this event. Amongst a field of some very high class runners – such as multi-medal winner Jessica Warner-Judd and last year’s Manchester Marathon winner Becky Briggs – this was a great achievement for our team. We were also the highest placed Sheffield running club in the ladies race (none of the other clubs showed up 🙂).

The route was a fairly flat out and back along the road next to the sea front (those on the long legs had the privilege of doing this twice…). A tail wind on the way out was a great confidence boost (maybe I can get a PB, I thought!), but you were soon humbled by a strong headwind when you turned around, which made getting to the finish a bit of a battle.

First up was Abbie on a long leg, who put in an absolutely amazing performance to put us in 5th place after leg one. She was also the 9th fastest of the day across the long legs, another seriously impressive achievement for her this year.

This meant that for me taking over for the second (short) leg in 5th place, losing some positions was probably inevitable. Amazingly, racing both the Sheffield half and the Elsecar 5 miler in the preceding 6 days didn’t lead to my best ever performance, but I did my best efforts at damage limitation and only let 6 people past – which I wasn’t too disappointed about seeing as the ladies were passing me at a pace I probably couldn’t even run 400m in.

Katie was up next, also on a short leg, and she managed to not only keep us in a good position, but also got a 5k PB – an astonishing achievement in difficult conditions – can’t wait to see what she can do without a head wind hampering her!

Caroline took on the following long leg, maintaining our position and looking super strong from start to finish as usual. A quick thanks also has to go to Caroline for organising the team and driving us all the way there.

With conditions worsening, Gilly took on the next short leg. She put in a super speedy effort to move us up one placing – well done Gilly on a great achievement considering we were already high up in the field.

Finally, Hannah was up last after being number one cheer squad in the cold all day for the rest of us! Going last after standing all day in horrible weather can’t have been easy, but she put in a really fast short leg to hold onto our 12th position!

Here’s an overview of our results:

Long Leg (9.5k):