The penultimate Stag of the season, as it always does, saw lots of people eliminated from the championship in terms of being potential winners. Prior to the March race there were 16 club members who technically had a chance. Now, with just April’s race to go there are only five who have the possibility of winning. This is actually more than normal, due to the much higher attendance this year and so will undoubtedly make for a competitive final race.

On the night, the first finisher was Mark Adkins who finished nearly 30 seconds ahead of brother-in-law Stuart Read who was at the front of a group of five that came in in five seconds with Tom Inchley, Sam Dear, Lisa Bowyer and Dominic Grimshaw making up the rest and all scoring points in the 20’s.

The weather on the night was far from ideal, with a stiff wind unusually blowing down Lake Street and rain from earlier in the day meaning it was damp under foot too. Therefore there were quite a lot of people slightly down on what they had hoped to run and yet 5 people still managed to run PB’s and couple equal their previous best.

Most remarkably of these was Dom Grimshaw. He has run all six Stags this season and has somehow managed to run 16:14 on four occasions. However, if he can run that time in those conditions, he really should be quicker in April when it’s light. The other person to equal his PB was Sam Dear, which will delight Adam as their rivalry is getting closer.

The genuine PB’s were earned by Mark (by 40 seconds), Stuart (11 secs), Lisa (1 sec), James Cusack (14 secs) and Pablo Simon (7 secs). You may wonder how Tom managed to get amongst this lot. Although his wasn’t a PB, it was his fastest time for a number of years and pretty close to his best ever.

So with one race to go there are technically five people who could scrape their way into third place, but in the most likely reality there are another five battling it out for the top three:

Currently Lisa leads the way on 99 points after five consecutive PB’s. Her maximum of 109 means she must finish in the top ten to improve her current score. James Cusack also has five PB’s in a row and is just one point behind. With a score of 7 from his first race to be dropped he just needs to finish in the first six places to guarantee victory overall. Stuart Read is the third of the gang to have PB’ed all season and whilst he is only on 86 points currently he has a measly 1 point to be lost from his total so has lots of opportunity to improve his standing.

The final two who are still in it are Stuart Dimmock and Sam Dear. Both will need high scoring runs and some luck to challenge the other three, but everything is possible in the Stag as has been shown many times before.

What is vital though, is that everyone else turns up and runs as fast as they can, just to complicate the issue and make it more interesting. It’s often the case that one change of position halfway down the field makes all the difference! April is also the best month for PB’s as it will be light and hopefully a little warmer. Make sure the 6th is in your diary and get involved in the finale.

All the results and current standings can be found via the Stag Trophy pages.