For the first time ever, LBAC entered a ladies team into the southern six-stage road relays at the Open University in Milton Keynes. Over the course of the last 20 years, the club has sporadically entered a men’s team into the 12-stage event held on the same day. This year, whilst the men couldn’t scrape together a team of twelve, the ladies did a fantastic job of very quickly getting a good team together, and were rewarded with a perfect day for running.

With the sun shining, Gail Duckworth lead off the team with another great performance, in which she finished the stage in 10^th place despite being a V50 and battling with all age groups. Obviously, with Gail running so well, there was a lot for the other ladies to live up to, but they did it extremely well with Amelia Wallace taking on the second leg in her first run representing the club and completing the 3.4 mile loop at exactly 7.30 mile pace. Amelia then handed on to Stacey Thorne who brilliantly stepped in at the last minute after two significant injuries to other team members. Stacey had never run a race before, but didn’t let her nerves get the better of her at all as she ran faster than she has ever run before to complete the route in a time much quicker than she expected.

Laura Smith then took over the baton and ran LBAC’s second fastest time of the day, just ducking under 25 minutes, continuing her strong running from the previous Wednesday. Laura handed over to team captain Amy Inchley who ran faster than she has for the last couple of months to record a good time before handing over to last leg runner, Lousie Flack. Louise put in another strong performance to just nip under 25 minutes as well and bring the team home in 18^th position cheered on by a small group of the mens team and ahead of enormous clubs like Woodford Green & Essex Ladies, Harrow and Aldershot who could not complete teams!

All in all it was a great afternoon for our ladies, and one that will hopefully continue for many years to come. Well done to all involved and we’ll see you at the next one. There are all the photo’s now in the Gallery for your perusal.