Legend has it that there is a secret burning ceremony following the tour of MK where any spare T-shirts, not earned by competitors are cast into the flames to ensure that undeserving people cannot get their hands on these prized possessions! Whether or not this is true, a tour finishers T-shirt is certainly hard to come by as it costs much sweat, occasional blood and the odd tear! So, four days into this year's tour, the event is starting to take it's toll, but all ten LBAC members are hanging on in their battles with accidents, injury and the athletes of MK.

So far, those competing have done a fairly flat 11K road run, a five mile cross-country (including stream crossings), a mile on the track at Stantonbury and a 2 mile hill race around the woods in Bow Brickhill, with the final two days consisting of 4.5 miles round the hills of Campbell Park and a 10K negotiating cattle grids, gates and geese around Willen Lake before a small shindig on the final evening.

As it stands, each club member has their own personal battle to fight. Amy Inchley rather rashly entered the tour just a couple of weeks after Erin was born as a target to get her going. Having regretted this a couple of weeks ago, she is now surprising herself by running each race quicker than expected, including a 6:50 mile on the track. She currently lies in 4^th place out of 14 women in the tour and is focused on a couple of the MK chaps just in front!

Chris Williams is playing chauffeur to the youth of the club all week and himself is having a tussle with the second lady overall after a strong run up and down the hills yesterday. There is a rumour going round that even Charlie Mead is starting to get competitive. As the world's most relaxed looking runner he is currently lying in 22^nd place overall, but after two strong days on the short distances he has his eye on a top twenty finish.

Despite his reputation for injury, Chris Norman is looking like he will remarkably complete his fourth consecutive tour in a couple of days time, but is struggling with shin splints and this has reduced his competitiveness, but this may possibly have also been affected by the post hill run 30^th birthday celebrations last night too. We shall see this evening!

There are a couple of intra-club challenges going on too, as just ahead of Chris in 12th and 14th respectively lie Billy Mead and Jordan Clay. Billy currently has a 20 second lead over Jordan, but you can be sure that Jordan won't let that battle be lost until the bitter end.

Possibly even more feisty is the Inchley face-off. Andy has pipped Tom in three of the four races so far, but the one where Tom was first home he was well in front and that gives him 7 second lead going into the finall 11 miles of the series. Tactics will undoubtedly be playing a big part over the next two days with Tom strong from his marathon training but Andy running quite quickly over the shorter ones.

Race one of the week, saw Pete Mackrell take a storming victory over the longest distance race but has not quite reached the same heights since, with a fall on the hill run yesterday meaning he lost a minute or so on the other leading contenders. It may have been karma for catching someone else' heel at the start and knocking thir shoe off! The result is that Pete is currently 5^th and 37 seconds off a podium place with his favourite race of the the week tonight!

The final club representative is new member Glen Turner, who leads the overall tour standings after four races having had three second places and a victory yesterday. 46 seconds separate him from the field at the moment and his distance work from his ultra-duathlon training suggests that he should have the strength to hold on to that lead over the next two days, but six consecutive days of racing sometimes taking their toll on the best of us, he won't be counting any chickens just yet.

Finally, Glen's girlfriend Nikki Elvin did her first race of the tour yesterday and had a strong run around the hills. Whilst she won't be in the full results, it proves that entries are welcome for individual races if anyone fancies either of the final two.