With just the Stag Trophy final positions to be sorted on Wednesday, Easter Monday saw the 35^th running of the Christmas handicap, also known as the Langmay Trophy.

With near freezing temperatures urging people to stay indoors, it was a relatively small group of 11 that met Dave Adams in the Football Club car park at 11am, desperate to get under way, just to try and warm up.

The very simple route heads out along Stanbridge Road, over the bypass before curving round to Billington where a right turn takes you up and over the hill and a straight run back in to town. It is around 5.6 miles and is historical rather than significant in any way.

The concept of the event is that everyone starts together but Dave has a secret list of predicted times for each runner. The winner is therefore the person who beats their predicted time by the largest amount.

This year's race involved running into a bitterly cold head wind for 2.5 miles before a short respite and then a nasty climb up Billington Hill. In theory we then had the wind at our backs for the final 1.5 miles, but we were all so cold and tired, it really didn't feel like it. Having just spent two sentences whinging about the race, in actual fact there were some pretty good runs.

With the exception of Alex Britt, whose university life is clearly taking it's toll, we were all pretty close to Dave's prediction, however there was a clear winner. An excellent run by Jane saw her beat her time by over a minute, but regular long runs from Chris Dimmock saw him power round the course nearly two minutes ahead of time to win the trophy that his father won ten years previosuly. Full results are below;

Position	Name	Time	Difference
1	Chris Dimmock	38:33	-1;47
2	Jane Sauer	41:36	-1:04
3	Liz Miller	52:21	-0:51
4	Roger Seldon	41:26	-0:44
5	Andy Inchley	33:44	-0:31
6	Joe Hurley	36:47	-0:03
7	Pete Watkins	52:29	+0:14
8	Pat Neilan	45:21	+0:16
9	Dan Webb	39:52	+0:17
10	Mark Haynes	50:37	+1:17
11	Alex Britt	43:05	+4:45