Autumn Relays 2000

The fourteenth running of the Top House Autumn Relays was held on Wednesday the 20th of September, as ever at the Kitty Brewster Industrial Estate. The weather during the event was reasonable enough, although in the half hour before the start it had absolutely poured down with rain, and everybody was wet through. A slight wind was blowing but didn't make much difference, except to cool everybody down on the return half.
Fourteen teams (two more than last year) lined up at the start line, and were away into the dark right on time.
Once again keeping both of their attendance records going were Steve Gillespie, who has the only 100% record for this event, and George Young, who has run all bar one of them.
The lead changed after each of the legs; first it was team M, then G and finally (and most importantly) team N led all the runners home. The victorious team N runners were: Denis Moss, Geoff McLane and Dale Stafford, in a time of 43:57 - around half a minute faster than last year's winning time. In second place, eighteen seconds adrift were team J; Tony Garrity, Ralph Dickinson and Rob Irvine. A further fourteen seconds passed and the third team came home, they were team G; Cath Young, Bill Smith and Michael Stott.
Fastest on the night was Robbie Barkley, (who also won a hat!) and the fastest Lady was Cath Young. Rob Hall was fastest vet, and once again recorded the evening's second fastest time. On a night where most people's times were similar to last year's event, Robbie Barklay's was 40 seconds quicker, so he's really flying at the moment.
None of the winning team members have featured before in the first three placed teams, so well done to them all for breaking their ducks. In fact, out of the nine prizewinners, only Cath and Ralph have placed before (Cath was in the winning teams of 1990, 1994 and 1999, and Ralph had a third place in 1996)

For the first time since this event was started, Ron Hope didn't do the organisation; this task was undertaken by Dave Kitching. This is a lot more work than most people realise, and Dave is to be congratulated and thanked for his efforts in putting on a very enjoyable and well contested event.

Thanks also to those who marshalled; Barney Foster, Jim Jones and Ken Gibson; those who did the timekeeping, Clive Richardson and Ron Hope; and to the finish recorders, Andy Brown and Angie Bosworth.

For those of you who enjoyed the event, but who thought conditions weren't cold or windy enough, the Winter Series dates are now confirmed:

Race 1 - 8th November
Race 2 - 29th November
Race 3 - 20th December
Race 4 - 17th January
Race 5 - 31st January
Race 6 - 14th February (very romantic!)
Race 7 - 28th February

Full results were as below: