As the sun shone down on Leighton Buzzard today, it really felt like spring had arrived as eleven merry club members made their way over to Sandy for the first of the 2012 club and county road race championships. However, as we headed east and crossed the M1 a mist descended and the 13 degrees of LB turned into 4 as we reached the far side of the county. This somewhat reduced our enthusiasm for shorts and vests, but most chose to brave the conditions anyway!

The course at Sandy is effectively a spoon shape with 3.5 miles out, followed by a 3 mile loop and the same 3.5 miles back in. This means the hill that you curse on after just a mile becomes a good friend at 8.5 if you have anything left to give. With a little bit of good pacing it can be an extremely fast course and ideal for negative splits (running the second half faster than the first). The race is on rural roads on the Cambridgeshire border and attracts the maximum 500 entries in recent years, with 476 finishing on this occasion.

Seven of the eleven LBACers ran last year's race and so had ideal target times, but all were feeling positive for different reasons. Even Amy was relatively happy to be there as the clocks had finally gone forward and winter was at an end.

With just a slight breeze in our faces on the flat and downhill between 2 and 4 miles, even that was in our favour as LBAC acheived a whole raft of cracking times in good conditions. The weather didn't warm up until we finished, but once we were running it certainly wasn't cold.

On the ladies front, Amelia wasn't quite feeling her usual sprightly self and wasn't best pleased with her run but was only a minute off last years time and came 67^th out of 180 ladies in the field. In front of Amelia, Jane Sauer had a blinder, to emphasise the huge improvement she has made in the last year to storm round and earn a six minute PB to clock 75:25 and be 26^th lady.

Just in front of Jane, Amy was one of many to record a negative split with a 6:40 last mile to come home 22^nd lady and achieve a PB by over 2 minutes with 74:03. Meanwhile Jo Breslin completed the team of three ladies that took fourth place overall by leading the team home in 8^th place with 68.23. I'm not sure if that's a PB, but it's very good indeed and it earned her second place in the county championships too.

On the men's side of things, Richard Inchley managed to run over 2 minutes quicker than last year and just 30 seconds slower than five years ago to come home in 81:33, which is pretty good for one of our most senior members. Another senior member just in front was Fred Watt who had no idea how he was going to run following illness, operations and holidays. However, he just managed to hold off Amy's challenge with 73:38 and was very pleased with the effort.

Dan Webb was running his first ever 10 mile and so was guaranteed a PB. He was pretty happy with his 70:11 and 98^th place, but will certainly be looking for a sub 70 next time around. Chris Dimmock is putting in some serious miles in his quest for a strong run in the MK marathon and so was rightfully delighted with his fastest time for a few years as he ducked under 70 with 69:36 and is now looking forward to his 23 miles next Sunday.

Nick Clay has had a winter to forget, with numerous injuries curtailing his cross-country season, but a well applied packet of peas and a proper warm-up saw him run 1:30 quicker than last year as he prepares for London in four weeks and come home in the top 50 with 64:20 which was is a good sign for the weeks to come.

Like Nick, Chris Norman managed very few races over the winter due to dodgy legs, but clearly spending the cold months working on a rowing machine has not done too much harm as he also stormed around in a new PB of 61:43 that was unthinkable just a month ago. The final club member making his way around the course was Andy Inchley who also managed to break his five year old PB from the same course and running a negative split by coming home in 8^th place overall and recording 58:53.

All in all, a great morning out east for LBAC and a race that is highly recommended to anyone wanting a fast time early in the road running season. Bring on Flitwick and all those Spring marathons.