Wednesday night saw the return of our old wintery friend, the Stag Trophy. This monthly event from October to April has been going since 1976 and is one of the most prestigious awards that can be won at the end of the season. The reason for this is that is favours those who turn up regularly and most importantly, consistently improve throughout the year. Three out of the last four years, the trophy has been won by someone in their first year with the club and the exception was Gary who improved greatly as he built up for the London marathon.

The race is a great sharpener as it is over a distance that is shorter than most people generally run and so really helps to develop your speed, which in the long term will improve times over longer distances. It does hurt while you're doing it, but is over with pretty quickly and is worth it really!

Wednesday's race saw a first ever victory for Rod Lopez, as he smashed his PB of last October by over thirty seconds to finish in 16:00. It must be down to the warm weather training in Brazil last month. Rod had a great battle with Laurie Parr who also gained a new PB, however this was possibly expected as eighteen years have passed since the last time he ran the course at the age of twelve and so 15:32 is a very good effort.

 There were three other PB's on the night with Amy Inchley's 17.10 earning her third place and 23 points as she made sure she stayed ahead of the dastardly fourth placed individual. Billy Mead and Brian Foulger both proved that they hadn't been slacking off over the summer as they both beat their best ever times to gain sixth and seventh respectively, with Billy edging ever closer to the 14 minute threshold.

In addition, there were five people taking part for the first ever time with mixed results, down to Dave having to guess handicaps somewhat blind, so well done to Helen, Janet, Kirk, Kelly and Carole for coming out and taking part. Dave now has a basis on which to give them an appropriate handicap next month.

So, in the early stages Rod holds the yellow jersey, but there is a very long way to go yet and people can really sneak up on the outside as Dan did last year so don't count any chickens before April!