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Scunthorpe women pound the roads of Birmingham
Six Scunthorpe ladies headed to Birmingham to take part in the national road relays last weekend. Where they were one of 68 teams contesting the national 6 stage road relay championships. With teams as far a field as Southampton and Scotland contesting the 3 mile circuit of Sutton Coldfield Park this was going to be a challenging day for the Scunthorpe and district team. Especially as the hilly course was to be made even more testing by the 20 degree heat.
The race is run in traditional relay format with each team consisting of 6 runners and every runner completes a 3 mile loop of the course before handing over to the next team member. After the first few legs the race gets very strung out and at this point it was the job of team manager Gav MANN to make sure his next runner was warmed up and ready in the change over area. Gav had set the team the challenging target of finishing in the top half of the race
The team got off to a great start when Sarah Kemshall ran an excellent first leg. The first leg is probably the only time all 68 teams could see each other at the mass start. Sarah ran the 70th fastest time of the day and handed over to Rachel Fisk recording a time of 18mins.06 secs.
Rachel was making her final appearance for the club before taking up a position as a PTI in the armed forces. So despite feeling under the weather she was determined to run a good leg. As it happened she showed great determination to keep going when she felt like stopping to run a time of 21.15. To hand over in 38th place to Shelly Spacey.
Shelly also suffered slightly in the very hot conditions but still managed to put in a reasonable time of 22.57 to hand over in 44th place to Bethan Hammond
17 year old Bethan was making her very first appearance in a road relay race and had been drafted in as a late replacement for Jayne Kemshall who was forced to withdraw due to a back injury. Bethan found herself running in a big gap and did very well to maintain her pace to run 22.05 and hand over in 42nd place.
At this point team manger Gav Mann unleashed his 2 secret weapons in the form of twins Lindsay SKINNER and Nicola CURTIS. Both women have become mums for the first time in the last couple of years and are now on the come back trail. The club is hoping the theory that some women come back stronger after giving birth proves to be true with the twins. First to push herself was Lindsay. Lindsay’s pace surprised the teams photographer who missed her strong finish when she moved the team up 5 places handing over in 37th place after running 19.18. This set Nicola up with a chance of achieving the top half finish requested by the team manager. But it was going to need a special leg and that was exactly what Nicola delivered with a time of 17.50 to push the team up to 31st place and she recorded the 59th fastest time of the day.
After the race team manager Gav Mann said ‘This was a great run by the girls and to finish 31st in a national championship is a great effort. But I am sure in the coming years this team can improve on that. I would love to get a top 25 finish’
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