It was a dreary and damp morning that the 28 members of the four LBAC teams and respective soloists awoke to on Saturday. This was in complete contrast to all the previous Greensand Ridge Relay's since the dawn of time, which have always been held on the hottest day of the year.

There were four brave/foolish club members who had decided that a 33 mile jaunt across Bedfordshire in the height of summer would be a really good idea and correspondingly they were the first four to start, with Ian Hosley going off in lovely conditions at 10:30am followed by Joe Hurley at 11:30, Stuart Blofeld at 11:45 and Pete Mackrell at 12:00, just as the sun was starting to burn off the clouds. All these chaps were aiming for the same 5pm finish that the teams were targetting, but with none of them having done the event before it was something of a guess.

Starting just beind Pete at 12:05 was Chris Dimmock for the Guys & Doll team, made up of entirely of the club's veterans. The second of our teams for the off was our defending ladies champions, headed up by Laura Smith who shot off down the canal at 12:19. Steve Harrison from the Fun Runners had been roped in to help out our second men's team at 12:42, before Simon Coombes started plum last for the Buzzard Bolts, although he was alongside former British number 3 marathon runner Huw Lobb, who was taking on the full distance.

Leg one from the Waterside Park in Leighton to the far side of Stockgrove is quite possibly the toughest leg on the course because it is the second longest leg with a really fast start before being hit by all the hills in the last 2.5 miles. Both Laura and Steve were well inside their handicap times but Simon Coombes was pushed all the way by Huw and as a result smashed the course record by 1:30 minutes to be over 8 minutes inside the handicap.

Leg 2 is the shortest of the six legs at just under 4 miles and after all of the soloists had gone through with no problem Uncle Pete headed off with his team in third place, but being hunted by all the others, who were Amelia, Craig Nelson and Billy Mead. Using his experience, Mr Watkins managed to keep exactly to his handicap time whilst all the other three were well inside theirs, with Amelia the fifth quickest of the 15 ladies on her leg, whilst Billy and Craig were the quickest two overall. Indeed Billy set a new course record for U17 and U20, completing the course in under 26 minutes.

As leg three started in Woburn, the teams were beginning to bunch up a little, the sun had broken through and we were getting back towards the traditional Greensand weather. Gary Buckle started half an hour after Pete (the last of our solo runners) had gone through and ten minutes in front of Amy, who had a further ten minutes on Tom May, who's lead over Andy at the start was down to 30 seconds thanks to Billy's tremendous run. The big challenge though, was that although the first two Leighton boys had put the Bolts team in first place for the fastest overall, Ampthill now had Phil Holland (10K pb of 30:55!) on leg 3 and Paul Farmer (32:54) on leg 4!

As it turned out, all our runners ran pretty well, with Gary holding on to sixth place for the G&D team, Amy was the fastest of all the seven ladies on the leg while both Andy and Tom were more than five minutes inside their handicap times, with Andy second quickest and gaining nine places, unfortunately Phil Holland gained fourteen and got Ampthill to within two minutes of the Bolts.

With our four intrepid soloists still cruising along at the Millbrook handover, none of them had been caught by our teams, but the G&D team still had 6-8 minutes lead on the others who finished very close together. With Jon Hull out to make up for last year's navigational error he headed off on leg 4 not knowing how far behind the others were. Nick Clay charged off six minutes behind Jon with a target of catching him, while Jane and Dan Webb had their own private battle.

On the approach to the leg 4/5 handover Nick spotted Jon and Stuart in front and managed to get past both to move the Bolts into ninth in the main race after running more than five minutes inside his handicap before handing on to Tom Inchley. Dan managed to just get the better of Jane for the Nuts team as they moved up to twelfth, despite Jane's being the second quickest of all the ladies on the leg. With over ten miles still to go, the solo runners were starting to struggle a little in the heat and Stuart stopped to take on plenty of water for the very exposed final two legs from the A6 to Northill.

On leg 5 Tom was now overtaking numerous soloists, including both Pete and Joe as everyone really bunched up and it got pretty confusing, however there were some cracking runs. Tom was second quickest, Fred was over five minutes inside his handicap, Lynn was five minutes quicker than Kate last year and Liz Miller set a new course record for W65 and beat her handicap by over ten minutes! Although Ian was still well in front of the rest of our runners, the soloists and teams were now interspersed with each other, but all were in remarkably good spirits considering we were at Deadman's Cross!

First over the finish line was Ian Hosley in a total time of 5:43 for the 33 miles and he was ahead of all the teams. The final leg saw all four of our team runners pick up places with Chris Norman bringing the bolts home third as the second quickest leg 6 of the day. Mike Bryant gained three places for the Nuts too as they crossed in 11^th, four minutes in front of our ladies team.

Unfortunately, Fiona had withdrawn due to injury so Tom Inchley roped in a colleague called Lucy who runs for Bearbrook. Well Lucy did a pretty good job by being the sixth quickest overall, the fastest lady on the leg, gained one team place to come home 13^th, beat her handicap by eight minutes and set a new course record for W35! Even Richard had the pleasure of overtaking one other team and Pete Mackrell (make the most of it Dad!) on the run to the pub as he beat his handicap by over 5 minutes too. The three remaining solo runners all crossed the finish line soon after, and between all the LBAC representatives there was only one route error, by Joe on leg three, so pretty good really.

As Stuart crossed the line in 5:24 we all made a mass movement towards the pub for a hard earned beer, burger and the presentations. On the solo front, Ian's time gave him ninth place out of the 17 who attempted the distance, while Stuart came home seventh. Despite his minor detour, Joe completed in 5:21 and took sixth which is pretty good for a V50. Pete Mackrell smashed the old course record by 25 minutes to take third place on the day in 4:56 and all four should be congratulated for just completing the course.

On the team front, in addition to the handicap results above, the Bolts time of 3:36 ended up being three minutes over the time set by Ampthill and so took second place in the open category while the Nuts were fourth quickest in a minute under four hours. However, the glory for the second year running went to the ladies team, who's time of 4:25 was four minutes quicker than the team from Tring so they had the beautiful trophy to take home again!

Most importantly however, LBAC were represented by over twenty people in the pub and were last to leave, while the speedy boys from Ampthill didn't even manage a pint between them! Beer race next year maybe?

There are lots more photo's on the Facebook page and they will be in the gallery too…..eventually.